'DEARTEACHERMISSRALSTON,—'I can’t be George Washington any more because I have lied to you. I must not tell you about what, because you would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong.'Your friend,'DAVIDRUDINSKY.'
'DEARTEACHERMISSRALSTON,—
'I can’t be George Washington any more because I have lied to you. I must not tell you about what, because you would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong.
'Your friend,'DAVIDRUDINSKY.'
Again and again Miss Ralston read the note, unable to understand it. David, her David, whose soul was a mirror for every noble idea, had lied to her! What could he mean? What had impelled him?Somebody who didn’t do wrong.So it was not David alone; there was some complication with another person. She studied the note word for wordand her eyes slowly filled with tears. If the boy had really lied—if the whole thing were not a chimera of his fevered nights—then what must he have suffered of remorse and shame! Her heart went out to him even while her brain was busy with the mystery.
She made a swift resolution. She would go to David at once. She was sure he would tell her more than he had written, and it would relieve his mind. She did not dread the possible disclosures. Her knowledge of the boy made her certain that she would find nothing ignoble at the bottom of his mystery. He was only a child, after all—an overwrought, sensitive child. No doubt he exaggerated his sin, if sin there were. It was her duty to go and put him at rest.
She knew that David’s father kept a candy shop in the basement of his tenement, and she had no trouble in finding the place. Half the children in the neighborhood escorted her to the door, attracted by the phenomenon of a teacher loose on their streets.
The tinkle of the shop-bell brought Mr. Rudinsky from the little kitchen in the rear.
'Well, well!' he exclaimed, shaking hands heartily. 'This is a great honor—a great honor.' He sounded the initialh. 'I wish I had a palace for you to come in, ma’am. I don’t think there was such company in this house since it was built.'
His tone was one of genuine gratification. Ushering her into the kitchen, he set a chair for her, and himself sat down at a respectful distance.
'I’m sorry,' he began, with a wave of his hand around the room. 'Such company ought not to sit in the kitchen, but you see—'
He was interrupted by Bennie, who had clattered in at the visitor’s heels, panting for recognition.
'Never mind, teacher,' the youngster spoke up, 'we got a parlor upstairs, with a mantelpiece and everything, but David sleeps up there—the doctor said it’s the most air—and you dassn’t wake him up till he wakes himself.'
Bennie’s father frowned, but the visitor smiled a cordial smile.
'I like a friendly kitchen like this,' she said quietly. 'My mother did not keep any help when I was a little girl and I was a great deal in the kitchen.'
Her host showed his appreciation of her tact by dropping the subject.
'I’m sure you came about David,' he said.
'I did. How is he?'
'Pretty sick, ma’am. The doctor says it’s not the sickness so much, but David is so weak and small. He says David studies too much altogether. Maybe he’s right. What do you think, ma’am?'
Miss Ralston answered remorsefully.
'I agree with the doctor. I think we are all to blame. We push him too much when we ought to hold him back.'
Here Bennie made another raid on the conversation.
'He’s going to be a great man, a doctor maybe. My mother says—'
Mr. Rudinsky did not let him finish. He thought it time to insure the peace of so important an interview.
'Bennie,' said he, 'you will go mind the store, and keep the kitchen door shut.'
Bennie’s discomfiture was evident in his face. He obeyed, but not without a murmur.
'Let us make a covenant to take better care of David in the future.'
Miss Ralston was speaking when Mrs. Rudinsky appeared in the doorway. She was flushed from the exertions of a hasty toilet, for which she had fled upstairs at theapproach of 'company.' She came forward timidly, holding out a hand on which the scrubbing brush and the paring knife had left their respective marks.
'How do you do, ma’am?' she said, cordially, but shyly. 'I’m glad to see you. I wish I can speak English better, I’d like to say how proud I am to see David’s teacher in my house.'
'Why, you speak wonderfully!' Miss Ralston exclaimed, with genuine enthusiasm. 'I don’t understand how you pick up the language in such a short time. I couldn’t learn Russian so fast, I’m sure.'
'My husband makes us speak English all the time,' Mrs. Rudinsky replied. 'From the fust day he said to speak English. He scolds the children if he hears they speak Jewish.'
'Sure,' put in her husband, 'I don’t want my family to be greenhorns.'
Miss Ralston turned a glowing face to him.
'Mr. Rudinsky, I think you’ve done wonders for your family. If all immigrants were like you, we wouldn’t need any restriction laws.' She threw all possible emphasis into her cordial voice. 'Why, you’re a better American than some natives I know!'
Mrs. Rudinsky sent her husband a look of loving pride.
'He wants to be a Yankee,' she said.
Her husband took up the cue in earnest.
'Yes, ma’am,' he said, 'that’s my ambition. When I was a young man, in the old country, I wanted to be a scholar. But a Jew has no chance in the old country; perhaps you know how it is. It wasn’t the Hebrew books I wanted. I wanted to learn what the rest of the world learned, but a poor Jew had no chance in Russia. When I got to America, it was too late for me to go to school. It took me all my time and strength to make a living—I’ve neverbeen much good in business, ma’am—and when I got my family over, I saw that it was the children would go to school for me. I’m glad to be a plain citizen, if my children will be educated Americans.'
People with eyes and hands like Mr. Rudinsky’s can say a great deal in a few words. Miss Ralston felt as if she had known him all his life, and followed his strivings in two worlds.
'I’m glad to know you, Mr. Rudinsky,' she said in a low voice. 'I wish more of my pupils had fathers like David’s.'
Her host changed the subject very neatly.
'And I wish the school children had more teachers like you. David likes you so much.'
'Oh, he liked you!' the wife confirmed. 'Please stay till he veks up. He’ll be sorry to missed your visit.'
While his wife moved quietly around the stove, making tea, Mr. Rudinsky entertained their guest with anecdotes of David’s Hebrew-school days, and of his vain efforts to get at secular books.
'He was just like me,' he said. 'He wanted to learn everything. I couldn’t afford a private teacher, and they wouldn’t take him in the public school. He learned Russian all alone, and if he got a book from somewhere—a history or anything—he wouldn’t eat or drink till he read it all.'
Mrs. Rudinsky often glanced at David’s teacher, to see how her husband’s stories were impressing her. She was too shy with her English to say more than was required of her as hostess, but her face, aglow with motherly pride, showed how she participated in her husband’s enthusiasm.
'You see yourself, ma’am, what he is,' said David’s father, 'but what could I make of him in Russia? I was happy when he got here, only it was a little late. I wished he started in school younger.'
'He has time enough,' said Miss Ralston. 'He’ll get through grammar school before he’s fourteen. He’s twelve now, isn’t he?'
'Yes, ma’am—no, ma’am! He’s really fourteen now, but I made him out younger on purpose.'
Miss Ralston looked puzzled. Mr. Rudinsky explained.
'You see, ma’am, he was twelve years when he came, and I wanted he should go to school as long as possible, so when I made his school certificate, I said he was only ten. I have seven children, and David is the oldest one, and I was afraid he’d have to go to work, if business was bad, or if I was sick. The state is a good father to the children in America, if the real fathers don’t mix in. Why should my David lose his chance to get educated and be somebody, because I am a poor business man, and have too many children? So I made out that he had to go to school two years more.'
He narrated this anecdote in the same simple manner in which he had told a dozen others. He seemed pleased to rehearse the little plot whereby he had insured his boy’s education. As Miss Ralston did not make any comment immediately, he went on, as if sure of her sympathy.
'I told you I got my citizen papers right away when I came to America. I worked hard before I could bring my family—it took me four years to save the money—and they found a very poor home when they got here, but they were citizens right away. But it wouldn’t do them much good, if they didn’t get educated. I found out all about the compulsory education, and I said to myself that’s the policeman that will keep me from robbing my David if I fail in business.'
He did not overestimate his visitor’s sympathy. Miss Ralston followed his story with quick appreciation of his ideals and motives, but in her ingenuous American mindone fact separated itself from the others: namely, that Mr. Rudinsky had falsified his boy’s age, and had recorded the falsehood in a public document. Her recognition of the fact carried with it no criticism. She realized that Mr. Rudinsky’s conscience was the product of an environment vastly different from hers. It was merely that to her mind the element of deceit was something to be accounted for, be it ever so charitably, whereas in Mr. Rudinsky’s mind it evidently had no existence at all.
'So David is really fourteen years old?' she repeated incredulously. 'Why, he seems too little even for twelve! Does he know?—Of course he would know! I wonder that he consented—'
She broke off, struck by a sudden thought. 'Consented to tell a lie' she had meant to say, but the unspoken words diverted her mind from the conversation. It came upon her in a flash that she had found the key to David’s mystery. His note was in her pocketbook, but she knew every word of it, and now everything was plain to her. The lie was this lie about his age, and the person he wanted to shield was his father. And for that he was suffering so!
She began to ask questions eagerly.
'Has David said anything about—about a little trouble he had in school the day he became ill?'
Both parents showed concern.
'Trouble? what trouble?'
'Oh, it was hardly trouble—at least, I couldn’t tell myself.'
'David is so hard to understand sometimes,' his father said.
'Oh, I don’t think so!' the teacher cried. 'Not when you make friends with him. He doesn’t say much, it’s true, but his heart is like a crystal.'
'He’s too still,' the mother insisted, shaking her head.'All the time he’s sick, he don’t say anything, only when we ask him something. The doctor thinks he’s worrying about something, but he don’t tell.'
The mother sighed, but Miss Ralston cut short her reflections.
'Mrs. Rudinsky—Mr. Rudinsky,' she began eagerly, 'Ican tell you what David’s troubled about.'
And she told them the story of her last talk with David, and finally read them his note.
'And this lie,' she ended, 'you know what it is, don’t you? You’ve just told me yourself, Mr. Rudinsky.'
She looked pleadingly at him, longing to have him understand David’s mind as she understood it. But Mr. Rudinsky was very slow to grasp the point.
'You mean—about the certificate? Because I made out that he was younger?'
Miss Ralston nodded.
'You know David has such a sense of honor,' she explained, speaking slowly, embarrassed by the effort of following Mr. Rudinsky’s train of thought and her own at the same time. 'You know how he questions everything—sooner or later he makes everything clear to himself—and something must have started him thinking of this old matter lately—Why, of course! I remember I asked him his age that day, when he tried on the costume, and he answered as usual, and then, I suppose, he suddenlyrealizedwhat he was saying. I don’t believe he everthoughtabout it since—since you arranged it so, and now, all of a sudden—'
She did not finish, because she saw that her listeners did not follow her. Both their faces expressed pain and perplexity. After a long silence, David’s father spoke.
'And what doyouthink, ma’am?'
Miss Ralston was touched by the undertone of submissionin his voice. Her swift sympathy had taken her far into his thoughts. She recognized in his story one of those ethical paradoxes which the helpless Jews of the Pale, in their search for a weapon that their oppressors could not confiscate, have evolved for their self-defence. She knew that to many honest Jewish minds a lie was not a lie when told to an official; and she divined that no ghost of a scruple had disturbed Mr. Rudinsky in his sense of triumph over circumstances, when he invented the lie that was to insure the education of his gifted child. With David, of course, the same philosophy had been valid. His father’s plan for the protection of his future, hingeing on a too familiar sophistry, had dropped innocuous into his consciousness, until, in a moment of spiritual sensitiveness, it took on the visage of sin.
'And what doyouthink, ma’am?'
David’s father did not have to wait a moment for her answer, so readily did her insight come to his defense. In a few eager sentences she made him feel that she understood perfectly, and understood David perfectly.
'I respect you the more for that lie, Mr. Rudinsky. It was—anoblelie!' There was the least tremor in her voice. 'And I love David for the wayhesees it.'
Mr. Rudinsky got up and paced slowly across the room. Then he stopped before Miss Ralston.
'You are very kind to talk like that, Miss Ralston,' he said, with peculiar dignity. 'You see the whole thing. In the old country we had to do such things so many times that we—got used to them. Here—here we don’t have to.' His voice took on a musing quality. 'But we don’t see it right away when we get here. I meant nothing, only just to keep my boy in school. It was not to cheat anybody. The state is willing to educate the children. I said to myself I will tie my own hands, so that I can’t pull mychild after me if I drown. I did want my David should have the best chance in America.'
Miss Ralston was thrilled by the suppressed passion in his voice. She held out her hand to him, saying again, in the low tones that come from the heart, 'I am glad I know you, Mr. Rudinsky.'
There was unconscious chivalry in Mr. Rudinsky’s next words. Stepping to his wife’s side, he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and said quietly, 'My wife has been my helper in everything.'
Miss Ralston, as we know, was given to seeing things. She saw now, not a poor immigrant couple in the first stage of American respectability, which was all there was in the room to see, but a phantom procession of men with the faces of prophets, muffled in striped praying-shawls, and women radiant in the light of many candles, and youths and maidens with smouldering depths in their eyes, and silent children who pushed away joyous things for—for—
Dreams don’t use up much time. Mr. Rudinsky was not aware that there had been a pause before he spoke again.
'You understand so well, Miss Ralston. But David'—he hesitated a moment, then finished quickly. 'How can he respect me if he feels like that?'
His wife spoke tremulously from her corner.
'That’s what I think.'
'Oh, don’t think that!' Miss Ralston cried. 'He does respect you—he understands. Don’t you see what he says:I can’t tell you—because you would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong.He doesn’t blame you. He only blames himself. He’s afraid to tell me because he thinksIcan’t understand.'
The teacher laughed a happy little laugh. In her eagerness to comfort David’s parents, she said just the right things, and every word summed up an instantaneous discovery.One of her useful gifts was the ability to find out truths just when she desperately needed them. There are people like that, and some of them are school-teachers hired by the year. When David’s father cried, 'How can he respect me?' Miss Ralston’s heart was frightened while it beat one beat. Only one. Then she knew all David’s thoughts between the terrible, 'I have lied,' and the generous, 'But my father did no wrong.' She guessed what the struggle had cost to reconcile the contradictions; she imagined his bewilderment as he tried to rule himself by his new-found standards, while seeking excuses for his father in the one he cast away from him as unworthy of an American. Problems like David’s are not very common, but then Miss Ralston was good at guessing.
'Don’t worry, Mr. Rudinsky,' she said, looking out of her glad eyes. 'And you, Mrs. Rudinsky, don’t think for a moment that David doesn’t understand. He’s had a bad time, the poor boy, but I know—Oh, I must speak to him! Will he wake soon, do you think?'
Mr. Rudinsky left the room without a word.
'It’s all right,' said David’s mother, in reply to an anxious look from Miss Ralston. 'He sleeps already the whole afternoon.'
It had grown almost dark while they talked. Mrs. Rudinsky now lighted the lamps, apologizing to her guest for not having done so sooner, and then she released Bennie from his prolonged attendance in the store.
Bennie came into the kitchen chewing his reward, some very gummy confection. He was obliged to look the pent-up things he wanted to say, until such time as he could clear his clogged talking-gear.
'Teacher,' he began, before he had finished swallowing, 'What for did you say—'
'Bennie!' his mother reproved him, 'You must shame yourself to listen by the door.'
'Well, there wasn’t any trade, ma,' he defended himself, 'only Bessie Katz, and she brought back the peppermints she bought this morning, to change them for taffy, but I didn’t because they were all dirty, and one was broken—'
Bennie never had a chance to bring his speeches to a voluntary stop: somebody always interrupted. This time it was his father, who came down the stairs, looking so grave that even Bennie was impressed.
'He’s awake,' said Mr. Rudinsky. 'I lighted the lamp. Will you please come up, ma’am?'
He showed her to the room where David lay, and closed the door on them both. It was not he, but Miss Ralston, the American teacher, that his boy needed. He went softly down to the kitchen, where his wife smiled at him through unnecessary tears.
Miss Ralston never forgot the next hour, and David never forgot. The woman always remembered how the boy’s eyes burned through the dusk of the shadowed corner where he lay. The boy remembered how his teacher’s voice palpitated in his heart, how her cool hands rested on his, how the lamplight made a halo out of her hair. To each of them the dim room with its scant furnishings became a spiritual rendezvous.
What did the woman say, that drew the sting of remorse from the child’s heart, without robbing him of the bloom of his idealism? What did she tell him that transmuted the offense of ages into the marrow and blood of persecuted virtue? How did she weld in the boy’s consciousness the scraps of his mixed inheritance, so that he saw his whole experience as an unbroken thing at last? There was nobody to report how it was done. The woman did not know nor the child. It was a secret born of the boy’s need andthe woman’s longing to serve him; just as in nature every want creates its satisfaction.
When she was ready to leave him, Miss Ralston knelt for a moment at David’s bedside, and once more took his small hot hands in hers.
'And I have made a discovery, David,' she said, smiling in a way of her own. 'Talking with your parents downstairs I saw why it was that the Russian Jews are so soon at home here in our dear country. In the hearts of men like your father, dear, is the true America.'
'THEchild will have to have a new dress if she’s to take part in the Christmas entertainment.'
My mother spoke very low, so as not to wake me, but I heard her. I had been too excited to fall asleep.
'Of course,' said my father in his big voice that never could get down to a whisper.
'S-sh,' warned my mother; and then added, 'But we shouldn’t get it, George. You know what the last doctor’s bill amounted to.'
'Oh, let the little thing have it. It’s her first chance to show off.'
'S-sh,' my mother warned again. After a moment I heard her say, 'Well, perhaps it won’t cost so very much, and as you say it’s the first time.'
I turned over in bed and prayed, 'Dear Lord, please help my mother to get me a new dress.' For a new dress was one of the chief joys of taking part, and I had longed so to take part.
Although I had been a member of our Sunday school in good and regular standing ever since I was three weeks old, and had been put on the Cradle Roll, that being in the eyes of my parents the nearest approach to dedication allowable to Baptists, I was taking part for the first time, and I was seven. There had been numerous occasions in these seven years for taking part: our Sunday school celebrated Easter, Children’s Day, Anniversary Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with quite appropriate exercises. But it was a large school, and I had freckles and whatAunt Emma, my cousin Luella’s mother, called 'that child’s jaw.' Aunt Emma meant my front teeth, which were really most dreadfully prominent: in fact they stuck out to such an extent that Aunt Emma seldom failed to see them when she saw me.
Aunt Emma wasn’t used to children with jaws. Her little Luella had the prettiest teeth imaginable: she was pretty all over, pretty golden hair, pretty blue eyes, pretty pink cheeks,—not a freckle,—and pretty arms very plump and white. She was just my age, and she was invariably asked to take part. It seemed reasonable that she should, and yet I felt that if they only knew that I had a mind,—a mind was what an uncle once said I had, after hearing me recite the one hundred and third Psalm, the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, and the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, with only one mistake,—they would ask me too. A mind should count for something, I thought, but it didn’t seem to with Miss Miriam.
Miss Miriam was the assistant superintendent. She was a tall, thin, youngish-looking woman, with fair hair and a sweet, rather white face. She always wore very black dresses and a little gold cross, which one of the Big Girls told us was left to her by her mother, who was an Episcopalian. Miss Miriam got up all the entertainments, and it was she who made out the list of the people who were to take part in them. Three or four Sundays before an entertainment was to be given, Miss Miriam would come from the Big Room to our Primary Department with a lot of little white slips in her hand and a pad and pencil. While we were having the closing exercises, she would walk very quietly from class to class distributing the little white slips. The slips said, 'Please meet me after Sunday school in the Ladies' Parlor.' If you were given a slip, it meant you were chosen to take part.
Once I confided my longing to my mother.
'What makes you want to so much, Martha? You’re not a forward little girl, I hope.'
Forwardness in my elders' opinion was the Eighth Deadly Sin, to be abhorred by all little girls, especially those who had heard it said that they had a mind. Little girls who had heard that might so easily, from sheer pride of intellect, become 'forward.'
'I’m not forward,' I assured her. 'I—I, oh, mother, it’s so nice to be in things.'
And now at last I was in things. I could still feel the touch of the white slip which had been put into my hand only that afternoon; and I turned over in my bed on my other side and prayed with even more fervor.
'O Lord, please help my mother to get me a new dress.'
He did. A week later my mother went to town. She brought back white Persian lawn, the softest, sheerest stuff I had ever felt. I could see the pink of my skin through it when I laid it over my hand.
'I’m going to have a new dress for the entertainment,' I told Luella on my way to rehearsal. 'Are you?'
'Why, of course. I always do. Mine’s going to have five rows of lace insertion in the skirt and tiny tucks too.'
'Mine’s to have tucks, but it won’t have but one row of lace in the skirt. Mother says little girls' dresses don’t need much lace.'
'I like lots of lace,' said Luella; but her tone of finality did not disturb my happiness. I was disturbed only when, at another rehearsal, Luella told me that her mother was making a blue-silk slip to wear under her white dress. Almost everyone wore slips when they spoke pieces.
I gave my mother this information.
'Isn’t the white dress pretty enough, Martha?'
I fingered the soft material she was sewing. 'It’s beautiful,' I said, hiding my face in her neck. Then I whispered, 'I don’t mind if Luella has a slip, mother.'
I did mind, but I knew I oughtn’t.
My mother raised my head and adjusted the bow on one of my skimpy little pigtails. She looked as she did sometimes after my Aunt Emma had just gone.
'We’ll see if you can have a slip. What color would you like—supposing you can?'
'Pink,' I answered promptly, 'like my best hair-ribbons.'
Pink china silk was bought. When I tried it under the Persian lawn it matched the ribbons exactly. I jiggled up and down on my toes—my only way of expressing great joy.
The dress, when my mother was not working on it, lay in the spare room on the bed. I made countless pilgrimages to the spare room. Once I slipped the dress on by myself. I wanted to see how I looked. But the mirror of the spare-room bureau was very small; so I inserted a hair-brush. With the mirror tipped I could see quite all of me—only I didn’t see quite all. I didn’t see my freckles, or my jaw, or my very thin legs. I saw a glory of pink and white, and I grinned from sheer rapture.
The spare room had no heat: there was a register, but unless we had company the register was closed. My mother found me one day kneeling by the bed, shivering, but in ecstatic contemplation of my dress, which I had not dared to try on a second time. She gave me ginger tea. I gulped it down meekly. I felt even then that as a punishment ginger tea is exquisitely relevant. It chastens the soul but at the same time it warms the stomach you’ve allowed to get cold.
I had been very much afraid that before the night of the entertainment,—it was to be given the twenty-third of December,—something would surely happen to my dressor to me; but the night arrived and both were in a perfect state of preservation. To expedite matters, as the Sunday school was to assemble at a quarter past seven, my mother dressed me before supper. Just as the last button was fastened, we heard footsteps on the front porch.
'There, Martha! Go show your father.'
I ran down into the hall and took up my position in the centre of it; but when I heard the key turn in the latch of the inside door I wanted to run away and hide. I had never felt so beautiful.
My father stopped short when he saw me. 'By the Lord!' he ejaculated.
'Why, George!'
My mother was on the stairs.
'Well, by the Great Guns then—you’re a—a vision, Marty.' I could only grin.
'Here’s some more pinkness for you to wear,' he said, producing a long tissue-paper package that he had been holding behind his back. He chuckled as he unwrapped it. 'Twelve, Marty; twelve solid pink carnations. What do you say to 'em? Show your mother.'
I said nothing. I only jiggled on my toes.
'George, dear, what made you? A little child like that can’t wear flowers—and they’re seventy-five cents a dozen!'
All the chuckle went out of my father’s eyes: he looked at me, then at the carnations, then at my mother, just like a little boy who finds that after all he’s done the wrong thing. I wanted to run and take his hand; but while I stood, wanting and not daring, my mother had crossed the hall and was putting her arms around his neck.
'They’re beautiful, George dear. She can wear three or four of them, anyway. They will make her so happy, and the rest we’ll put in her room. Her room is pink too.'
'So it is.' He kissed my mother and then me. 'Say your piece, Marty—quick! Before we have supper.'
I had learned my piece so thoroughly that the order was like turning on a spigot. Four verses, four lines in each, gushed forth.
My father clapped. 'Now for something to eat,' he said.
Immediately after supper my mother and I set out, leaving my father to shave and come later. It was a cold night with a great many bright stars. At the corner we met Luella and her mother. Luella’s mother was carrying over her arm Luella’s spring coat, her everyday one, a dark blue reefer.
'Martha ought to have hers along, too,' said my Aunt Emma. 'If the church should be chilly they’ll catch their death sitting in thin dresses.'
My mother thought it was probable we would. So I was sent back to hunt for my little reefer. It was like Luella’s, dark blue with tarnished gilt anchors on the corners of the sailor collar, and like hers it was second-best and outgrown.
Luella and I parted with our mothers at the door of the Sunday school room.
'Don’t forget to take your reefers when you march in,' admonished my Aunt Emma.
'Must we carry them while we march?' I almost wailed.
My mother came to the rescue. 'Hold them down between you and the little girl you march with. Then no one will see.'
'Yes’m.' I was much relieved.
The Sunday school was a hubbub of noise and pink and blue hair-ribbons. In among the ribbons, and responsible for some of the noise, were close-cropped heads and white collars and very new ties, but you didn’t notice them much. There were so many pink and blue ribbons. Aftera while the room quieted down and we formed in line. Miss Miriam, who even that night wore a black dress and her little gold cross, distributed among us the eight silk banners which, when we weren’t marching, always hung on the walls of the Sunday school rooms. There were subdued whispers and last prinkings. Then the piano, which had been moved into the church, gave the signal and we marched in.
We marched with our banners and our pink and blue hair-ribbons up and down the aisles so that all the Mothers-and-Fathers-and-Friends-of-the-School could see us. Whenever we recognized our own special mother or father, we beamed. The marching finally brought us to the pews assigned to our respective classes. Luella’s class and mine were to sit together that night. I turned round—almost every little girl, after she was seated and had sufficiently smoothed out skirts and sash, turned round—and saw that my mother and aunt were only two pews behind us. I grinned delightedly at them, and they both nodded back. Then I told Luella. After that I settled down.
The church was decorated with ropes of green and with holly wreaths. At either side of the platform was a Christmas tree with bits of cotton-batting scattered over it to represent snow. I had heard that there were to be two Christmas trees, and I had looked forward to a dazzling glitter of colored balls and tinsel and candles, maybe. The cotton-batting was a little disappointing. It made you feel that it was not a real Christmas tree, but just a church Christmas tree. Church things were seldom real. The Boys Brigade of our church carried interesting-looking cartridge-boxes, that made them look like real soldiers; but when they drilled you found out that the cartridge-boxes were only make-believe. They held Bibles. Still, the cotton-batting did make you think of snow.
After what seemed like a very long wait the entertainment began. The minister, of course, opened it with prayer. Then we all sang a carol. As we were sitting down I felt some one poke my shoulder.
'Your mother says you must put on your jacket. She says you’ll take cold,' whispered the little girl behind me.
I had not felt cold, but the command passed along over two church pews had the force of a Thus-saith-the-Lord. While I was slipping the jacket carefully over my ruffles, some one poked Luella and whispered to her. Luella looked at me, then put on her jacket.
The superintendent was making a speech to the Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. When he finished, we rose to sing another carol, and as we rose, quite automatically Luella and I slipped off our jackets. I was very excited. After the carol there would be a piece by one of the Big Girls; then the Infant Class would do something; then I was to speak. I wondered if people would see the pink of my slip showing through my dress as I spoke my piece. I bent my head to get a whiff of carnation.
We were just seated when there came another poke and another whisper.
'Your mother says to keep on your jacket.
I looked back at my mother. She smiled and nodded, and Aunt Emma pointed to Luella. We put on our jackets again. This time I buttoned it tight; so did Luella. I felt the carnations remonstrate, but when one is very excited one is very obedient: one obeys more than the letter of the law.
The Big Girl was speaking her piece. I didn’t hear the words; the words of my own piece were saying themselves through my head; but I was aware that she stopped suddenly, that she looked as though she were trying to remember, that someone prompted her, that she went on. SupposeI should forget that way, before my father and mother and the friends of the school and Miss Miriam! It was a dreadful thought. I commenced again,—with my eyes shut,—
'Some children think that Christmas dayShould come two times a year.'
'Some children think that Christmas dayShould come two times a year.'
I went through my verses five times, while the Infant Class individually and collectively were holding up gilt cardboard bells and singing about them. I was beginning the sixth time,—
'Some children think,—'
'Some children think,—'
when the superintendent read out,—
'The next number on the programme will be a recitation by Martha Smith.'
I had been expecting this announcement for four weeks, but now that it came, it gave me a queer feeling in my heart and stomach, half-fear, half-joy. Conscious only that I was actually taking part, I rose from my seat and made my way over the little girls in the pew, who scrunched up themselves and their dresses into a small space so that I might pass.
As I started down the aisle I thought I heard my name frantically called behind me; but not dreaming that any one would wish to have speech with a person about to speak a piece, I kept on down, way, way down to the platform, walking in a dim hot maze which smelled insistently of carnations.
But the poor carnations warned in vain. I ascended the platform steps with my reefer still buttoned tightly over my chest.
The reefer, as I have said, was dark blue, adorned with tarnished anchors, and outgrown. Being outgrown, it showed several inches of my thin little wrists, and being areefer and tightly buttoned, it showed of my pink and white glory a little more than the hem.
Still in that dim hot maze, I made my bow and gave the title of my piece, 'Christmas Twice a Year,' and recited it from beginning to end, and heard them clap, all the teachers and scholars and Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. Then, quite dizzied with happiness, I hurried down off the platform and up the aisle. People smiled as I passed them and I smiled back, for once quite unconscious of my jaw. As I neared my seat I prepared to smile upon my mother, but for a moment she didn’t see me. Aunt Emma was saying something to her, something that I didn’t hear, something that made two red spots flame in my mother’s face.
'Isn’t it just like Martha to be a little fool! She’s always doing things like that.'
Aunt Emma was one of those people who assume that you always do the particular foolish thing you have just finished doing.
The red spots died out when my mother saw me. She smiled as though she were very proud—and I was proud too. But before I could settle down to enjoy my satisfaction, Luella’s name had been called and Luella was starting down the aisle. Luella’s golden curls bobbed as she walked: they bobbed over her blue reefer jacket which was buttoned snugly over her plump body.
There was a suppressed exclamation from some one behind me, but Luella kept on. Luella’s jacket was not short in the sleeves, but it was very very tight. Only the hem of her blue and white glory peeped from beneath it, and a little piece of ruffle she had not quite tucked in peeped out from above it.
Luella bowed and spoke her piece. All the teachers and scholars, all the Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School applauded.
A queer sound made me look round at my mother and aunt. Their heads were bowed upon the pew in front. Their shoulders were shaking. When I turned around again they were sitting up, wiping their eyes as if they had been crying.
I could not understand then, nor did I understand late that night when my father’s laugh woke me up.
'Poor Emma!' he chuckled. 'What did she say?'
And my mother answered, her voice curiously smothered, 'Why, you see, she couldn’t very well say anything after what she had just said before.'
'I suppose not. Poor Emma, I suppose not.'
My father’s laugh broke out again.
'S-sh, George—you’ll wake Martha.'
THEconvent was a large square building of red brick, harsh of outline, unlovely in its proportions. It stood on the rise of a barren hill, unfriended by the trees of the little valley below, unsoftened by the pleasant landscape above which its ugly bulk arose, stern and domineering. To the south and west lay fertile fields and huddling farm-buildings; to the east, beyond the little valley, rose many closely wooded hills; while to the north,—ah, the north!—one of the greatest wonders of all this wonderful world lay there; for if one climbed to the highest story of the convent and looked out of any window to the north, one beheld that never-ceasing miracle—the sea!
Sister Anne had known no other home but the convent for nearly half a century, but the sight of those unresting waves never failed to set her spirit free: free of unknown and enchanted worlds, worlds of wonder, of mystery, and of heart-stirring beauty. She was merely a plain, silent, hard-working, rather stupid old woman, who had never been in all her life admired or considered, or even loved, unless one counts the tepid affection of those with whom she lived. She had been brought here as a young girl from the orphanage where she had passed her childhood; and since she had been one of those who are always willing to do what is asked of them, no matter how unpleasant or hard it may be, there had fallen to her share all the humblest and meanest of the household tasks, all the petty drudgeries which must be done and which no one wishes to do. Her place was always in the kitchen or the laundry.She would have liked to cook, but that had never been suggested. She had always been put to washing dishes. Here again she had a preference: she would have liked to wash the glassware, which came out of the hot suds like bubbles and must be polished on the softest and cleanest of towels; or even the clumsy plated forks and spoons, which to her were very beautiful. There was nothing delicate or lovely about the great iron soup-kettles which her patient hands must cleanse, or about the greasy roasting pans. And it was the same way in the laundry. Only the coarsest, heaviest of the washing was given to her: the rag mats that lay beside the beds in the dormitories, the big aprons that the working sisters wore, the cloths that were used in cleaning the lamps. Not for her the intricacies of starching and skillful ironing and fluting.
Yet all the years of toil had not saddened Sister Anne. If any one had questioned her and she had been able to express herself, she might have said that the forces which had formed her sturdy body had given her also a spirit capable of sustaining itself on the most meagre happiness. But no one questioned her, and she was at all times slow and scant of speech.
The sources of her contentment lay all without the convent walls; and being there, it was strange that she should have discovered them. As a matter of fact she had not discovered them. They had come, through a slow and unconscious process, to be a part of her life. It had begun, humbly enough, in the kitchen garden. When first she came to the convent she had not been very well, and they had set her to weeding the vegetables in order that she might be out of doors as much as possible. Her simple, kindly nature had turned in solicitude and affection to this springing life that responded to her tendance. No great and lovely lady in her garden ever looked with more prideand admiration on her roses and lilies than did Sister Anne on her beans and cabbages and early peas. Through them she had come to watch with interest every change in the weather, anxious for the needed rain, fearful of the early frost, rejoicing when sun and air and moisture did their kindly best.
And thus it was, through a process simple, gradual, inevitable, that her heart had wakened to the wonder and the beauty of the world about her. At first she saw no farther than the garden, finding joy in the clear green of the new shoots, pleasure in the sturdy growth of some robust plant, or a still ecstasy in the dew-crowned freshness of the bean flowers in the early morning. But soon that morning magic lay before her marveling eyes upon the near-by fields and the distant hills, and in time she beheld the wonderful pageant from mystic dawn to dawn, and that still more wonderful pageant of the changing months.
No one knew or guessed the joy that filled her life from this dumb intercourse with flying cloud or snow-hung cherry tree, or from the deep stillness of a green-clad hill in a summer noon. When she was younger, she used sometimes to speak of these things to her companions; but she had early learned that they neither understood nor cared to understand the feelings which she would have shared with them. But this did not disturb her. She felt for those with whom she lived good-will and a mild affection, but hers was not a nature to expect or need sympathy. She had a profound and sincere humility which rendered her incapable of envy. She felt herself, without bitterness, to be the inferior of all with whom she came in contact. The fact that they were indifferent to what were to her the purest sources of happiness never seemed to her a lack in them, but only an accentuation of the fact that she was less clever than they. To read, to embroider, to converse,to make long devotions, were all beyond her powers. She was not 'spiritual-minded.' Prayers were to her a tedious and difficult task, to be fulfilled conscientiously but always finished with relief. This indeed came by slow degrees to be a source of pain and anxiety to her. She felt herself a sinner. In the laborious and inarticulate processes of her mind there gradually took form the knowledge that she would rather do any kind of work than pray; that she would rather, far rather, sit in idleness, looking out upon the familiar, beloved landscape, than pray. This seemed to her inexplicably wicked, but it never occurred to her to change, although she sometimes felt that she would go to hell because of it.
Such thoughts were, however, neither frequent nor enduring with her. When she made her preparation for confession, she used sometimes to endeavor to formulate this general sense of wrongdoing; but the matter was too subtle for her limited powers of expression, and she never got beyond the specific instance, as when she neglected the kettles so that she might watch a storm coming up across the hills, or walked five miles on a singing May morning to get a not indispensable supply of fresh eggs from a farmhouse. Not for many penances would she have foregone the clean joy of that walk. Spring came late and slowly to this bit of world beside the sea, but came none the less surely, none the less with magic and enchantment in its wings; the new color on field and hill, the wonderful smell of the earth and of the budding shoots, the divine air, that now blew chill and austere as from the cave of winter itself and now touched the cheek with a shyness, a softness, a warmth, like early love.
Sister Anne had no imagery. She was sixty years old, ignorant, unread, unimaginative, slow and dull of wit. Yet walking through this newly-created world, she felt that joymore keen than pain—that wordless ecstasy whose channel is the senses, but which sends the spirit groping back toward God who gave it life. Although she felt that this marvelous universe came from the beneficent hand of some supreme Good, she never identified it with the Deity to whom she made her difficult devotions. Deep in her heart there grew a strong sense of gratitude, of obligation, a wish vague and unformed, yet compelling, that in some way she might make return for the happiness which life had brought her.
She tried to spend more time in the chapel and to say an extra number of Aves; but this did not satisfy her, and even her unseeking mind felt some doubt as to the worth of such mechanical and joyless prayers.
So the placid months and years slipped by, and at last there came to Sister Anne, as does not come to all of us, her great hour.
It was a cloudless, windless, intolerably hot day in midsummer. Sister Anne had been on an errand to a fisherman’s hut at some distance from the convent. As she walked slowly home through the woods, she reached a place in the path which led near the shore and from which a few steps brought her out upon a little promontory. Never, it seemed to her, had the sea looked so blue or the sails of the distant ships so white. She stood for a long time gazing out toward the horizon before she saw anything nearer; but when she did see, she hurried down to where she could get out on the beach. On a tiny rocky islet some two hundred feet or so from the shore lay the figure of a man in a swimming-suit. It was evident that he was either dead or unconscious.
Sister Anne considered for a while and then without even removing her shoes, waded out to him. He was not dead, she found at once, but stunned by a blow on the head, apparentlyfrom one of the sharp rocks on which he lay. Sister Anne cleansed and bound the wound with her kerchief, and then sat for a few moments, her face grave and perplexed. Her bit of human wreckage was only a boy of sixteen or so, tall, slender, with thick, rough blond hair and skin fair as a child’s. Sister Anne, by putting forth her whole strength, had been able to move him only a few inches so that it was manifestly impossible for her to get him to the shore. The fisherman’s hut from which she had just come was deserted, its owner off on a cruise; there was not even a boat there. The convent was a good three quarters of an hour away, make what haste she would, and it would take as much longer to return with help. In an hour, she well knew, the islet would be submerged by the rising tide. She knew of no other fishing-hut and of no farmhouse nearer than the convent.
The water had been nearly to her waist in one place as she came, and she could see that it had risen a little, even in this short time. She took off her black robe and did what she could with its aid to put the helpless lad in a more comfortable position; then, desperately, by every means at her command, she set about restoring him to consciousness. For a long time she met no response to her efforts. Indeed, more than once she anxiously leaned her ear against his chest, to be sure that his heart still beat. At last, when she had almost given up, discouraged, he made a slight sound, and a moment later tried to sit up, only to sink back into coma again. In a few minutes more, however, he opened his eyes and looked at her with manifest intelligence. Instantly she spoke to him with all the urgency she could summon.
'You must swim ashore as soon as you can. The tide is coming in and if you stay here you will be drowned, unless you are able to swim. If you can start now you will be ableto walk part of the way between here and the beach; but part you must swim, even now.'
Again he struggled to sit up and this time succeeded, although for a moment he had to lean against Sister Anne’s shoulder.
'As soon as you are able,' she reiterated anxiously, 'you must swim ashore.'
He shifted himself and gazed at her in considerable perplexity.
'Do you know how I hurt my head?' he asked. 'I must have fallen as I was climbing up here. And how did you come here?'
'I was passing,' Sister Anne explained, 'and I saw you lying here. I waded out to you. The water was not as deep then. Now—'
She paused, and a look of fear and anguish grew in her dull eyes.
'You cannot swim?' asked the boy.
'Oh, no, no!' she answered, her head sinking on her breast.
'Yet you stayed here to help me when you might have got safe ashore if you had left me? Did you know that you would be caught by the tide?'
'I am old,' she answered; 'it must come to me before many years in any case. But you are so young. I could not leave you. Your mother—'
The boy looked at her a moment with shining eyes and flushing face. Then he rose cautiously, and tentatively flexed the muscles of his legs and arms.
'Will you take off your shoes?' he said gently.
She gazed at him in bewilderment, and he explained to her carefully what he would do and what she must do. It took some time to make her understand, for her slow mind had not compassed such a possibility; but when once itwas clear to her what was to be done, she was docility itself. Well for Sister Anne now that the strongest habit of her life was obedience. But for that, the lad, strong swimmer as he was, could not have brought her safe to shore.
That night the placid life of the convent throbbed and thrilled with an excitement unknown in its history. Sister Anne, for the first time in her existence, was the centre of a storm of solicitude, of attention, of agitation. She herself was unmoved. She came back from death as unemotionally as she had gone to meet it. She sat by the window of her room, wishing that she might be left alone to watch the moon rise above the quiet hills.
The Mother Superior, the curé himself, had visited her, had said strange and wonderful things to her which she scarcely understood. The whole Sisterhood buzzed about her like a hive, for it seemed that the fair-skinned lad of her adventure was the heir of a house whose name was famous in many lands, and the father was even now standing at her threshold.
Sister Anne was not embarrassed by the great presence, fame and wealth and high birth and all the glories of this world being indeed less than words to her. Moreover, her visitor brought to this interview with an old unlettered woman all the charm and suavity and tact of which he was so well the master. The tale his son had told had seemed to him incredible and touching, and he felt a desire to understand the impulses which had made possible so singular an episode. He soon found that she had indeed faced death in full knowledge of what she did; that she had wittingly given up her chance of escape that the boy might have his. But to find the motive was not so simple. Delicately he probed one channel after another: duty, heroism, religious training, in none of these could he find the clue. Her life,he reflected, could hardly have been so full of happiness as to have attached her very strongly to this world, and deftly he pursued that trail, still unsuccessfully.
Baffled for the moment, he was silent, watching her unrevealing face. The late summer twilight was darkening into deep shadows on the hillside, but the eastern sky was still clear yellow from the sunset. Just beyond that bank of clouds, Sister Anne thought, the moon would rise before long. The man beside her, still pondering his problem, made some comment on the clustering trees in the valley below.
She turned to him at once with a changed look.
'They are at their thickest now,' was all she said; but he saw that at last he had opened the closed door.
In a few moments more, under his skillful touch, were revealed to him the simple and profound sources of happiness on which her spirit fed. In sentences so incomplete, in thoughts so inarticulate as to be mere suggestion, he comprehended her, and at length, with infinite gentleness, drew forth the thread of explanation which he had sought so patiently.
She had felt for long, he gathered, that she owed a heavy debt in return for all the joy in life that had been hers. She felt that her life had held more happiness than she deserved, happiness for which she had made, it seemed to her, but inadequate return. When she had found the helpless lad, she had found also, it seemed, her chance of payment. If she might save his life or at least give her own in the effort, this debt that she owed the world would be lessened.
When she had managed in some fashion to convey this much to her sympathetic listener, she paused and looked at him wistfully.
'A human life,' he said, in instant response, 'is worth more than words can measure. You gave the greatest giftin your power. Be content. When you behold the sunlight on the sea to-morrow, say to yourself, "But for me there is one on whom the sun would not shine to-day."'
She looked at him in silence, and he saw her breast rise and fall in one slow breath as if of relief.
A little longer he sat, considering, in strange humility, this old and humble woman toward whom he had had such generous intentions. What of the many gifts in his power might he offer that could enrich her life? Nothing! Nothing to give to this poor, lonely, ignorant, toil-worn being who in her starved existence had found more joy than she could make return for!
Once more he thanked her in his son’s name and his own, and with as careful a courtesy as if she had been his sovereign, bade her farewell.
The moon had climbed above the bank of clouds now, and the hillside lay transfigured in its light. Sister Anne leaned her head against the window-casing and looked for a while into the still summer night; then presently, being very weary, she slept, a dreamless sleep.
'RICHARD,' said my dad about a week after Commencement, 'life is real. You have had your education and your keep, and you’re a pleasant enough lad around the house. But the time has come to see what’s in you, and I want you to begin to show it right away. If you go to the coast with the family, it will mean three months fooling around with the yacht and the cars and a bunch of pretty girls. There’s nothing in that for you any longer.'
Of course, this rubbed me the wrong way.
'Now you’ve got your degree, it’s time we started something else. You say you want to be a scholar—I suppose that means a college professor. Of course scholarship doesn’t pay, but if I leave you a few good bonds, probably you can clip the coupons while you last. I don’t insist that you make money, but I do insist that you work. My son must be able to lick his weight in wild-cats, whatever job he’s on. Do you get me?'
I looked out of the window and nodded, somewhat haughtily. Of course I couldn’t explain to dad the mixture of feelings that led me to choose scholarship. For, while I am keen on philology, and really do love the classics so that my spirit seems to swim, if you know what I mean, in the atmosphere that upheld Horace and the wise Cicero of 'De Senectute,' I also thought there was money enough in the family already. Wasn’t it a good thing for the Bonniwells to pay tribute to the humanities in my person? Didn’t we, somehow, owe it to the world to put back in culture part ofwhat we took out in cash? But how could I get that across to dad?
He looked at me as if he, too, were trying to utter something difficult.
'There are passions of the head as well as of the heart,' he said finally. I opened my eyes, for he didn’t often talk in such fashion. 'The old Greeks knew that. I always supposed a scholar, a teacher, had to feel that way if he was any good—that it was the mark of his calling. Perhaps you’ve been called; but, if so, you keep it pretty dark.'
He stopped and waited for an appropriate response, but I just couldn’t get it out. So I remarked, 'If I’m not on the boat this summer, you’ll need another man when you cruise.'
'That’s my affair,' said he, looking disappointed. 'Yours will be to hold down your job. I’ve got one ready for you. If you don’t like it, you can get another. We’ll see about a Ph.D. and Germany later on. But for this season, I had influence enough to get you the summer school in the Jericho district beyond Garibaldi, and you can board with Seth Miles.'
When I was a child, before we moved to Chicago, we lived in Oatesville, at the back of beyond. Garibaldi is an Indiana cross-roads about five miles farther on the road to nowhere.
'O dad!' I said; but I put everything I thought into those two words.
He instantly began to look as much like the heavy father on the stage as is possible to a spare man with a Roman nose. So I shrugged my shoulders.
'Oh, very well!' I said. 'If you find me a fossil in the fall, pick out a comfortable museum to lend me to, won’t you?'
'Richard.' said my dad, 'God only knows how a boy should be dealt with. I don’t. If I could only tell you thethings I know so you would believe them, I’d set a match to half my fortune this minute. I want you totouch lifesomewhere, but I don’t know how to work it in. I’m doing this in sheer desperation.'
I could see he meant it, too, for his eyes were shiny and the little drops came out on his forehead.
'I don’t happen to know anybody fitter than old Miles to inspire a scholar and a gentleman. So, if the summer doesn’t do you any good, it can’t do you any harm. I shall label your season’s work "Richard Bonniwell, Jr. on His Own Hook. Exhibit A."—Don’t forget that. Your mother and I may seem to be in Maine, but I guess in our minds we’ll be down at Jericho schoolhouse looking on, most of the time.'
You 'd think a man might buck up in response to that, wouldn’t you? But I didn’t particularly. It made me feel superior toward dad because he didn’t know any better than to arrange such a summer, thinking it would teach me anything. I suspected this indulgent attitude of mine might break down later, and it did.
It was a blazing hot summer for one thing. One of those occasional summers of the Middle West when the cattle pant in the fields and the blades of corn get limp on their stalks.
Mr. Miles, who was a benign bachelor, lived in a brick farmhouse with one long wing, and a furnace of which he was very proud. He put up his own ice, too, which was more to the point in July. His widowed sister kept house for him, and, if the meat was usually tough, the cream and vegetables were beyond praise. He owned the store at Garibaldi as well as this large farm; so he was a man of means, and important in his own sphere. To look at, he was rather wonderful. I don’t know how to describe him. He had keen, kind blue eyes; wavy, white hair; strong,regular features. There was a kind of graciousness and distinction about him that didn’t fit his speech and dress. It was as if you always saw the man he might be in the shadow of the man he was. Put him into evening clothes and take away his vernacular, and he’d be one of the loveliest old patriarchs you ever met.
The schoolhouse was brick, too; set back from the road in a field of hard-trodden clay, decorated with moth-eaten patches of grass. For further adornment, there was a row of box-alders out in front. As a temple of learning, it fell short. As its ministrant, I did the same.
There were forty scholars: squirmy, grimy little things that I found it hard to tell apart at first. I knew this was not the right attitude, but how could I help it? I had never tried to teach anybody anything before in my life. The bigger girls blushed and giggled; the little boys made faces and stuck out their tongues. As it was a summer session, there were no big boys to speak of.
To go in for scholarship does not at all imply the teacher’s gift or the desire for it. At Oxford, you know, they are a bit sniffy about the lecturers who arouse enthusiasm. Such are suspected of being 'popular,' and that, really, is quite awful. Some of our men have a similar notion, and, no doubt, it colored my views. Yet, deep down, I knew that if I was a teacher, it was up to me to teach. I really did try, but it takes time to get the hang of anything.
I was homesick, too. Mildred and Millicent, my kid sisters, are great fun, and the house is full of young people all summer long at home. When I shut my eyes I could see the blue, sparkling waters of the inlet, and the rocking of our float with its line of gay canoes.
How can I describe the rising tide of sick disgust at my surroundings that began to flood my spirit? Now that it’s all in the past, I’d like to think it was purely my liver,—I didn’t get enough exercise, really I didn’t, for it was too hot to walk much,—but perhaps part of it was just bad temper.
You see, it takes a good deal of a fellow to stand such a complete transplanting. I hated the paper shades in my bedroom, tied up with a cord, and the Nottingham curtains, and the springs that sank in the middle. I hated the respectable Brussels carpet in the best room, and the red rocking-chairs on the porch. I hated the hot, sleepless nights and the blazing, drowsy days.
Oh, I tell you, I had a glorious grouch!
I didn’t exactly hate the squirming children, for some of them began to show signs of almost human intelligence after they got used to me, and that did win me; but I hated that little schoolroom where the flies buzzed loudly all day long on the streaky panes. With deadly hatred I hated it.
I got to feeling very badly treated. What did my father suppose such commonplace discomforts were going to do forme? What part had a summer like this in the life and work that were to be mine? I lost that comfortable little feeling of advantage over life. I mislaid my consciousness of the silver spoon. In about three weeks it seemed as if I’d always taught summer-school at Jericho, and might have to keep on.
Oh, well!—I was hot and sore. Everybody has been hot and sore some time or other, I suppose. The minute description can be omitted. But I don’t know whether everybody with a grievance gets so badly twisted up in it as I do.
These emotions reached their climax one muggy, sultry July day as I plodded, moist and unhappy, back from the schoolhouse. I wiped my forehead, gritted my teeth, and vowed I would not stand the whole situation anothertwenty-four hours. I’d resign my position, wire dad, and take a train for somewhere out West in the mountains. If I had to make good on my own hook in three months, I’d at least do it in a cool place, at work of my selecting. The challenged party ought to have the choice of weapons.
My room was intolerably stuffy, so I came downstairs reluctantly and sat on the front steps. There was a wide outlook, for the house stood on a ridge of land that broke the flat prairie like a great welt. Old Miles was there, watching a heavy cloud-bank off in the southwest. Those clouds had been fooling around every evening for a week, but nothing ever came of it. The longer the drought, the harder it is to break.
I made some caustic remark about the weather as I sat down. Probably I looked cross enough to bite the poker.
Miles looked at me and then looked away quickly, as if it really was not decent to be observing a fellow in such a rage. I knew the look, for I’ve felt that way myself about other men.
'Yes, bad weather,' he said. 'When it gets too hot and dry for corn, it’s too hot and dry for folks. And then—it always rains. It’ll rain to-night. You wait and see.'
I mumbled something disparaging to the universe.
'Richard!' said Mr. Miles suddenly and strongly, 'I know what ails you. It ain’t the weather, it’s your teaching. You’re discouraged because you can’t make 'em sense things. But it ain’t time yet for you to get discouraged. I hate to see it, for it ain’t necessary.'
This made me feel a little ashamed of myself.
'Did you ever teach, Mr. Miles?' I asked, for the sake of seeming civil.
'Yes, I did. So I know there’s a secret to teachin' you prob’ly ain’t got yet. I dunno as I could help you to it. It ain’t likely. An’ yet—'
Unlikely indeed! I thought. Aloud, I said politely, 'I’d be glad to hear your views.'
'I know what you feel!' he said with extraordinary energy. 'My Lord! Don’t I know what you feel? You want to make 'em sense things as you sense 'em. You want to make 'em work as you can work. You won’t be satisfied until you’ve given 'em the thirst to know and the means of knowing. Yes, I know what you feel!'
I stared at him, dumbfounded. I knew what I felt, too, but it wasn’t much like this.
'There are pictures in your brain that you must show 'em. There’s a universe to cram inside their heads. God has been workin' for a billion years at doing things—and just one little life to learn about 'em in! To feel you’re on His trail, a-following fast, and got to pass the feeling on—I guess there’s no wine on earth so heady, is there, boy?'
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand him. I have had it too—that wonderful sensation we pack away into two dry words and label 'intellectual stimulus.' But it hadn’t come to me that I could, or should, pass it on. I thought it was an emotion designed for my private encouragement and delight. And what was old Seth Miles doing with intellectual stimulus? I would as soon expect to unearth a case of champagne in his cellar. But, however he got it, undeniably it was the real thing.
A dozen questions rushed to my tongue, but I held them back, for he was looking me up and down with a wistful tenderness that seemed to prelude further revelation.
'I’m going to tell you the whole story now,' he said with an effort. 'I promised your father I would. He told me to. And I’d better get it over. Mebbe there’s something in it for you—and mebbe not. But here it is.'