"Tom!"
Until the call had been repeated twice behind him Tom Trevarthen did not hear. When, after a stupid stare at his hands (as though there had been blood on his knuckles), he turned to the voice, he saw Myra speeding bareheaded to overtake him. She beckoned him to stop.
"What will you do, Tom?" she panted, as he waited for her to come up.
"Me, missy? Well, I hadn't given it a thought; but now you mention it, I s'pose I'd better cut. 'Tis a police job, most like, as your aunt said. But never you mind for me."
The name of the police sounded terribly in Myra's ears.
"TheGood Intentwill be sailing to-night; I heard Peter Benny say so," she suggested; "and theMary Rowettto-morrow, if the weather holds."
Tom Trevarthen nodded. "That's so, missy. Old man Hancock of theGood Intentwants a hand, to my knowledge. I'll try 'en, or else walk to Falmouth. Don't you fret for me," he repeated.
They had reached the gate of Hall, over which a gigantic chestnut spread its branches. As Myra faced Tom Trevarthen a laugh sounded overhead; and, looking up, she saw Master Calvin's legs and elastic-sided boots depending from a green bough.
"Hullo, Myra!" Master Calvin called down. "How d'you get on up at the Board School?"
"Hedon't go to Board School," said Tom Trevarthen, jerking his thumb up towards the bough. "In training to be a gentleman,heis; not like Master Clem. Well, good-bye, missy!"
Myra watched him down the road, and, as he disappeared at the bend, flung a glance up at the chestnut tree.
"Come down," she commanded, in no loud voice, but firmly.
"Shan't."
"What are you doing up there?" She sniffed the air, her sense of smell alive to a strange scent in it. "You nasty, horrid boy, you're smoking!"
"I'm not," answered Master Calvin untruthfully, concealing a pipe. "I'm up here pretending to be Zacchæus."
Myra without more ado pushed open the gate and went up the path to the house. In less than two minutes she was back again.
"Come down."
"Shan't."
"Very well. I'm going to Zacchæus you."
"What's that in your hand?"
"It's grandfather's powder-flask; and I've a box of matches, too."
Hester's cupboard contained a small case of plasters, lint, ointments, etc., for childish cuts and bruises. She despatched a couple of boys to the playground pump to fetch water, and then glanced at Mrs. Purchase interrogatively.
"Better send for a doctor, I suppose?" said Mrs. Purchase.
"I think, if we bathe the wound, we can tell better what's necessary. Willyou—?"
"I reckon the job's more in your line. You've the look o' one able to nurse—yes, and you've the trick of it, I see," Mrs. Purchase went on, as Hester knelt, lifted the sufferer's head, and motioned to the boys to set down their basin of water beside her. "I'll clear the children out to the playground and keep 'em quiet. Call, if you want anything; I'll be close outside." The good lady shepherded them forth with brisk authority; not for nothing had she commanded a ship these thirty years. "But, Lord!" she muttered, "to think of me playing schoolmistress! What'll I do, I wonder, if these varmints of boys break ship and run home?"
She might have spared herself this anxiety. The children were all agog to see the drama out. Would Mr. Samuel recover? And, if not, what would be done to Tom Trevarthen? They discussed this in eager groups. If any of them had an impulse to run downhill and cry the news through the village, Mrs. Purchase's determined slamming and bolting of the playground gate restrained it—that, and perhaps a thought that by running with the news they would start the hue-and-cry after Tom.
Hester, having sponged away the blood, found that the cut on Mr. Sam's temple was nothing to need a doctor, but could be set right by cleansing and a few strips of plaster. Doubtless the fall had stunned him, and doubtless he must be in some pain. Yet when at length he groaned and opened his eyes she could not repress a suspicion (although she hated herself for it) that in some degree he had been shamming.
"Do not move, please," she commanded gently, snipping at the plaster with her scissors. "A couple of strips more, then a bandage, and you will soon be feeling better."
His eyes rolled and fixed themselves on her. "A ministering angel," he muttered. She caught the words, and turned her head aside with a flush of annoyance.
"You have an ugly bruise," she told him sharply. "I am going to put a cool compress on it. You had better close your eyes, or some of the water will be trickling into them."
He closed them obediently, but asked, "He has gone?"
"Yes."
"Thenyouare safe at least, thank God!"
Yes, he had taken his hurt in protecting her; and yet something in his tone caused her to glance, and as if for protection, to the doorway.
"You are comely," he went on slowly, opening his eyes again, and again rolling that embarrassing gaze upon her. "Your fingers, too, have the gift of healing."
She could not tell him with what repugnance she brought them to touch him. Having fastened the bandage firmly, she turned again to the doorway to summon Mrs. Purchase, but checked herself.
"I want to ask you a favour," she began in a hesitating voice.
"You may ask it confidently."
"I want you to forgive—no, not forgive; that is the wrong word—to be generous, and not to punish."
Mr. Samuel blinked. "Let him off?" he asked. "Why? What's your motive?"
"I don't know that there's any motive." She met his eyes frankly enough, but with a musing air as if considering a new suggestion. "No; it's just a wish, no more. An hour ago it seemed to me that everyone was eager and happy; that there would always be pleasure in looking back upon our opening day." Her voice trembled a little. "Now this has happened, to spoil all; and yet something may be saved if we bear no malice, but take up the work again, and show that we waste no time or thought on punishment, being determined only to win."
"You are asking a great deal of me," he answered. Nevertheless he had instantly resolved to grant her wish, and for many reasons. "I suppose you know the matter is serious enough for a warrant? Still, if I shall oblige you by declining to prosecute—"
"But please don't put it in that way!" she interrupted.
"I really don't see how else to put it." He paused, as if requiring her to suggest a better. "The point is, you want me to let the fellow off— eh? Well then, I will."
"Thank you," said Hester, with a sigh.
Mr. Sam smiled. After being shaken like a rat, a man needs to retrieve his self-respect, and he was retrieving his famously. He could see himself in a magnanimous light: he had laid the girl under an obligation; he had avoided public action which would, to be sure, have given him revenge, but at much cost of dignity; and, for the rest, he had still plenty of ways to get even with Master Tom Trevarthen.
Hester had a mind to tell him that he misconstrued her; that merely to abstain from pursuing the lad with warrant or summons neither fulfilled her request nor touched the kernel of it. But while she cast about for words Mrs. Purchase thrust a cheerful head in at the doorway.
"Hullo, that's famous!" she exclaimed at sight of the bandaging. "You're a clever woman, my dear; and now I'll ask you to bring your cleverness outside here and take these children off my hands. W'st, you little numskulls!"—she turned and addressed them—"keep quiet, I say, with your mountains out of molehills! There's no one killed nor hurt; only a foolish lad lost his temper, and he'll smart for it, and I hope it'll be a warning to you." She poked her head in through the doorway again. "Come along, Sam, and show yourself. And as for you, my dear," she went on hurriedly, lowering her voice, "better get 'em back to their work as if nought had happened. I'll bide a while with you till you have 'em in hand again."
"Thank you," said Hester; "but that wouldn't help me in the long-run. I must manage them alone."
"You mean that?"
"Yes; but I thank you none the less."
"And you're right. You're a plucky woman." She turned to Mr. Sam briskly. "Well, take my arm and put on as light a face as you can. Here's your hat—I've smoothed out the worst of the dents. Eh? Bain't goin' to make a speech, surely!"
Mr. Sam, leaning slightly on his aunt's arm, pulled himself up on the threshold and surveyed the children's wondering faces.
"Boys and girls," he said, "our opening day has been spoilt by a scene on which I won't dwell, because I desire you not to dwell on it. If you treat it lightly, as I intend to do, bearing no malice, we shall show the world all the more clearly that we are in earnest about things which really matter."
He cleared his throat and looked around with a challenging smile at Hester, who watched him, wondering to hear her own words so cleverly repeated.
"We wish," he proceeded, "to remember our opening day as a pleasant one. Miss Marvin especially wishes to look back on it with pleasure; and I think we all ought to help her. Now if I say no more about this foolish young man—whom I could punish very severely—will you promise me to go back to your books? To-day, as you know, is a half-holiday; but there remains an hour for work before you disperse. I want your word that you will employ it well, and honestly try to do all that Miss Marvin tells you."
He paused again, and chose to take a slight murmur among the children for their assent.
"I thank you. There is an old saying that he who conquers himself performs a greater feat than he who takes a city. Some of us, Miss Marvin, may hereafter associate the lesson with this our opening day."
He seemed to await some reply to this; but Hester could not speak, even to thank him. Her spirit recoiled from him; she could not reconcile egoism so inordinate with such cleverness in turning it to account. She watched him with a certain fascination, as one watches some trained monster in a show displaying its deformity for public applause. He shook hands with her and made his exit, not without dignity, leaning on Mrs. Purchase's arm and turning at the playground gate to wave farewell.
It is doubtful if the children understood his speech. But they were awed. At the word of command they trooped into school, settled themselves at their desks, and took up their interrupted lessons with a docility at which Hester wondered, since for the moment she herself had lost all power to interest or amuse them.
For her that was a dreadful hour. A couple of humble-bees zoomed against the window pane, and the sound, with the ticking of the schoolroom clock, took possession of her brain. Z-zoom! Tick-tack, tick-tack! Would lesson-time never come to an end? She went about automatically correcting sums, copies, exercises, because the sight of the pencilled words or figures steadied her faculties, whereas she felt that if she called the children up in class her wits would wander and all answers come alike to her, right or wrong. Her will, too, had fallen into a strange drowsiness. She wanted the window open, to get rid of the humble-bees; a word to one of the elder boys and it would be done. Yet the minutes passed and the word remained unspoken. So a sick man will lie and debate with himself so small a thing as the lifting of a hand.
At length the clock hands pointed to five minutes to noon. She ordered books to be shut and slates to be put away; and going to the harmonium, gave out the hymn, "Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing." The Managers had agreed upon this hymn; the Nonconformist majority insisting, however, that the concluding 'Amen' should be omitted. Omitted accordingly it was on the slips of paper printed for school use.
"Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,Thanks for mercies past receive;Pardon all their faults confessing;Time that's lost may all retrieve;May Thy childrenNe'er again Thy Spirit grieve."
"Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,Thanks for mercies past receive;Pardon all their faults confessing;Time that's lost may all retrieve;May Thy childrenNe'er again Thy Spirit grieve."
"Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,Thanks for mercies past receive;Pardon all their faults confessing;Time that's lost may all retrieve;May Thy childrenNe'er again Thy Spirit grieve."
The children, released from the dull strain of watching the clock, sang with spirit. Hester played on, inattentive to the words. At the end, without considering what she did, she pressed down the chords of the 'Amen,' and the singers joined in, all unaware of transgressing.
In the silence that followed she suddenly remembered her instructions to omit the word, and sat for a moment flushed and confused. But the deed was done. The children stood shuffling their feet, awaiting the signal of dismissal.
"You may go," she said. "We will do better to-morrow."
When their voices had died away down the road she closed the harmonium softly, and fell to walking to and fro, musing, tidying up the schoolroom by fits and starts. She wanted to sit down and have a good cry; but always as the tears came near to flowing she fell to work afresh and checked them. Not until the room looked neat again did she remember that she was hungry. Nuncey had cooked a pasty for her, and she fetched it from the cupboard, where it lay in a basket covered by a spotless white cloth. As she did so, her eyes fell on a damp spot on the floor, where, after bandaging Mr. Sam, she had carefully washed out the stain of his blood.
She looked at her hands. They were clean; and yet having set down the basket on the desk, and turned her stool so that she might not see the spot on the floor, she continued to stare at them, and from them to the white cloth. A while she stood thus, irresolute, still listening to the bees zooming against the pane. Then with a sudden effort of will she walked out and across the yard, to the pump in the far corner.
She was stooping to raise the pump handle, but straightened herself up again at the sound—as it seemed to her—of a muffled sob.
She looked behind her and around. The playground was empty, the air across its gravelled surface quivering under the noonday heat. She listened.
Two long minutes passed before the sound was repeated; and this time she knew it for the sob of a child. It came from behind an angle of the building which hid a strip of the playground from view. She ran thither at once, and as she turned the corner her eyes fell on little Clem.
She had missed him from his place when the children returned to the schoolroom. His sister, she supposed, had taken him home.
He stood sentry now in the shade under the north wall of the building. He stood there so resolutely that, for the instant, Hester could scarcely believe the sobs had come from him. But he had heard her coming; and the face he turned to her, though tearless, was woefully twisted and twitching.
"My poor child!"
He stretched out both hands.
"Where is Myra? I want Myra, please!"
Myra was in her bedroom, under lock and key; and this is how it had happened.
"What put it into your head to make that speech?" asked Mrs. Purchase, as she and Mr. Sam wended their way back to Hall. In form the question was addressed to her nephew; in tone, to herself.
Mr. Sam paused as if for breath, and plucking down a wisp of honeysuckle from the hedgerow, sniffed at it to gain time.
"I don't like talking about such things," he answered; "but it came into my head to do my Master's bidding: 'Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.'"
"Fiddlestick-end!" said Mrs. Purchase.
"I assure you—"
"If you don't mean to get upsides with Tom Trevarthen, I'm a Dutchman. 'Forgive your enemies' may be gospel teaching, but I never knew a Rosewarne to practise it. You're a clever fellow, nephew Sam, and that speech saved your face, as the Yankees say; but somehow I've a notion its cleverness didn't end there. I saw the schoolmistress watching you—did she put you up to it?"
"I don't mind telling you that she had interceded with me."
"I like the cut of that girl's jib," Mrs. Purchase announced after a pause. "She's good-looking, and she has pluck. But I don't take back what I said, that it's a wrong you're doing to Clem and Myra, putting them to school with all the riff-raff of the parish."
"That's the kind of objection one learns to expect from a Radical," her nephew answered drily.
"'Tis a queer thing, now," she mused, "that ever since I married 'Siah the family will have me to be a Radical; and 'tis the queerer, because ne'er one of 'ee knows what a Radical is or ought to be. S'pose I do hold that all mankind and all womankind has equal rights under the Lord—that don't mean they're all alike, do it? or that I can't tell a man from a woman, or my lord from a scavenger? D'ee reckon that we'm all-fellows-to-football aboard theVirtuous Lady, and the fo'c'sle hands mess aft?"
"They would if you were consistent," answered Mr. Sam, with positiveness.
She sighed impatiently. "There's times you make me long to wring your stiff neck. But I'll take your own consistency, as you call it. I don't notice you send that precious boy o' yourn to the Board School; and yet if 'tis good enough for Clem and Myra, 'tis good enough for any Rosewarne."
"Calvin has received a superior education. Yet I don't mind telling you that, if I find Miss Marvin competent, I propose asking her to teach him privately."
"O—oh!" Mrs. Purchase pursed up her lips and eyed him askance. "Such a nice-looking girl, too!"
Mr. Sam flushed beneath his sallow skin. He was about to command her angrily to mind her own business, when the air between the hedgerows, and even the road beneath his feet, shook with a dull and distant detonation.
"Sakes alive!" cried Mrs. Purchase. "Don't tell me that's the powder-ship, up the river!"
"It didn't come up from the river—it came from Hall!" He gripped her arm with sudden excitement; then, as she began to protest, "Don't talk, woman, but help me along! It came from Hall, I tell you!"
Master Calvin defied Myra bravely enough while she threatened, and even while she piled a little heap of gunpowder under the sycamore and ostentatiously sprinkled a train of it across the roadway. He supposed that she intended only to frighten him.
Nor would any mischief have happened had he kept his perch. The heap of gunpowder was too small to do serious damage—though he may well be excused for misdoubting this. But when Myra struck a match and challenged him for the last time, he called to her not to play the fool, and began to scramble down for dear life. In truth, for two or three minutes he had been feeling strangely giddy, and to make matters worse, was suddenly conscious of a horrible burning pain in his side.
So intolerable was the pain, that he clutched at it with one hand; and missing his hold with the other, slipped and hung dangling over the powder, supported only by the bough under the crook of his armpit. At that instant, while he struggled to recover his balance, Myra was horrified to see smoke curling about his jacket; a fiery shred of tobacco and jacket-lining dropped from his plucking fingers. She had flung away her match and was running forward—the burning stuff fell so slowly, there was almost time to catch it—when the ground at her feet leapt up with a flame and a bang, and Master Calvin thudded down upon the explosion.
She ran to him. He was not dead, for at once he began screaming at the pitch of his voice; but his features were black, his smallclothes torn, and his legs writhed in a terrifying way. His screams sank to groans as she beat out the smouldering fire in his jacket-lining; and for a while she could get no other answer from him. By and by she lost patience, and shook him by the shoulder.
"Oh, get Up for goodness' sake! I believe you're more frightened than hurt; but if you're really hurt, sit up and tell me what's the matter."
"Let me alone," groaned Calvin. "I want to die."
"Fiddlesticks—'want to die'! Come along to the pump and wash yourself."
"You're a wicked girl! You tried to kill me!"
"I didn't. I wanted to frighten you, and—and I'm sorry; but you fired the powder yourself with your nasty pipe, and you've burnt a hole in your pocket. You'd best come along and get washed and changed before your father catches you. It looks to me you've lost one of your eyebrows, but the other one's so pale I daresay 'twon't be noticed. Or I might give you a pair with a piece of burnt cork."
It was while she stood considering this that Mr. Sam and her aunt made their appearance round the corner of the road.
"Whatever in the round world have you children been doin'?" panted Mrs. Purchase, and wound up with a gasp at sight of Calvin's face.
"I believe I'm going to die!" The boy began to writhe again.
"What has happened?" his father demanded, with a shake in the voice, stooping to lift him.
"She—she tried to kill me!" Calvin pointed at her with vindictive finger, and at once clasped both hands over his stomach.
"I did not," retorted Myra.
"Ask her who brought the powder and laid a train right under me! Ask her what she's doing with that box of matches!"
"Is that true?" Mr. Sam demanded again, straightening himself up and fixing a terrible stare on Myra.
The girl's face hardened. "Yes, I brought the powder." She pointed to the flask lying in the roadway.
"You dare to tell me that you did this deliberately?"
"I never did it at all."
"Yes, she did!" almost screamed the boy. "She put the powder here; she owns up to it."
Myra shrugged her shoulders and turned away. "Very well; he's telling a nasty fib, but you can believe him if you like."
"Stop a minute, miss." Mr. Sam strode across to her. "You don't get off in that fashion, I promise you!"
She looked up at him sidewise, under lowered brows. "Are you going to beat me?" she asked quietly.
The question took Mr. Sam aback. "You deserve a whipping if ever a girl did," he answered, after a second or two. "First, it seems, you almost succeed in killing your cousin, and then you tell a falsehood about it."
"I have told you the truth. I put the powder there. As for meaning to kill him, that's nonsense, and he knows it. I didn't even mean to hurt him, though he deserves it."
"Deserves it!" echoed Mr. Sam.
"Yes, for robbing Clem."
"Sam—Sam!" Mrs. Purchase thrust herself between them. "What's the matter? Don't go for to hurt the child!"
"What—what does she mean, then?" He had stretched out a hand to grip Myra by the shoulder, but fell back with a yellow face.
"Tom Trevarthen told me." Myra pointed from father to son. "He says you're no better than a pair of robbers."
"Myra," said her aunt quietly, "go to your room at once. On your own confession you have done wickedly, and must be punished."
"Very well, Aunt Hannah."
"I must attend to Calvin first; but I will come to you by and by. Until then you are not to leave your room. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Aunt Hannah."
She turned and walked towards the house.
"And now," said Mrs. Purchase, after a glance at Mr. Sam's face, "let's see what bones are broken."
She bent over Calvin, but looked up almost immediately, as Mr. Sam uttered a sharp exclamation.
"What's this?" he asked, stooping to pick up a briar pipe.
Master Calvin blinked, and turned his head aside from Mrs. Purchase's curious gaze.
"I think it belongs to Tom Trevarthen," he mumbled.
"How on the airth did Tom Trevarthen come to drop a pipe here, and walk off 'ithout troubling to pick it up? If 'twas a hairpin, now," said Mrs. Purchase, not very lucidly, "one could understand it."
"I—I'm going to be ill," wailed the wretched Calvin, with a spasmodic heave of the shoulders.
"Well," his aunt commented grimly after a moment, "you told the truth that time, anyway."
Having conveyed him to the house and put him, with Susannah's help, to bed, Aunt Hannah went off to Myra's room, but descended after a few minutes in search of Mr. Sam, whom she found pacing the garden walk.
"Well?" he asked.
"I've told her the punishment—bread and water, and to keep her room all day. She says nothing against it, and I think she's sorry about the powder; but I can get no sense into her until her mind's set at rest about Clem."
"What about him?"
"Why, the poor child's left behind at the school."
"Is that all? Miss Marvin will bring him home, no doubt."
"So I told her. But it seems she don't trust Miss Marvin—hates her, in fact."
"The child must be crazed."
"Couldn't you send Peter Benny?"
"Oh, certainly, if you wish it." Mr. Sam went indoors to the counting-house, where Mr. Benny jumped up from his desk in alarm at sight of the bandages.
"Mercy on us, sir—you have met with an accident?"
"A trifle. Are you busy just now?"
Mr. Benny blushed. "I might answer in your words sir—a trifle. Indeed, I hope, sir, you will not think it a liberty; but the late Mr. Rosewarne used very kindly to allow it when no business happened to be doing."
His employer stared at him blankly.
"On birthdays and such occasions," pursued Mr. Benny. "And by the way, sir, might I ask you to favour me with the date of your birthday? Your dear father's was the 28th of May." Mr. Sam's stare lost its blankness, and became one of sharp suspicion.
"What have you to do with my birthday, pray?"
"Nothing, sir—nothing, unless it pleases you. Some of our best and greatest men, sir, as I am well aware—the late Duke of Wellington, for instance—have had a distaste for poetry; not that my verses deserve any such name."
"Oh!" said Mr. Sam, his brow clearing, "you were talking of verses? I've no objection, so long as you don't ask me to read them." He paused, as Mr. Benny's face lengthened dejectedly. "I mean no reflection on yours, Benny."
"I thank you, sir."
"Shakespeare—and I am told you can't get better poetry than Shakespeare's—doesn't please me at all. I tried him once, on a friend's recommendation, and came on a passage which I don't hesitate to call lascivious. I told my friend so, and advised him to be more careful in the reading he recommended. He was a minister of the gospel, too. I destroyed the book: one can't be too careful, with children about the house."
"I assure you, sir—"
"I don't suggest for a moment that you would be guilty of any such expressions as Shakespeare uses. We live in a different age. Still, poetry, as such, gives me no pleasure. I believe very firmly, Benny—as you may have gathered—in another world, and that we shall be held strictly to account there for all we do or say in this one."
"Yes, sir."
"If you will wait a moment, I have a note to write. You will deliver it, please, to Mrs. Trevarthen on your way home. But first I wish you to walk up to the school and fetch Master Clem."
Mr. Benny, absorbed in poetical composition, had either failed to hear the explosion at the gate, or had heard and paid no heed to it. He wondered why Master Clem should need to be fetched from school.
"And Miss Myra?" he suggested.
"Miss Myra has been sent to her room in disgrace," said Mr. Sam.
Mr. Benny asked no further questions, but pocketed the letter which Mr. Sam indited, and fetched his hat. As it happened, however, at the gate he met Hester leading Clem by the hand; and receiving the child from her, handed him over to Susannah.
"You are going home?" he asked, as he rejoined Hester at the gate. They were already warm friends.
"I am on my way. And you?"
"We'll cross the ferry together, if you'll wait a moment while I deliver a note at Mrs. Trevarthen's."
Mrs. Trevarthen was at her door. She took the note, and, before opening it, looked at Hester curiously.
"You know what's inside of it, I reckon?" she said, turning to Mr. Benny.
"Not a word."
"My eyes are bad," said Mrs. Trevarthen, who, as a matter of fact, could not read.
Mr. Benny knew this, and knew also that Mrs. Trevarthen as a rule employed Aunt Butson to write her few letters and decipher the few that came to her.
"The light's bad for the time of year," he said. "Shall I read it for you, missus?"
"No; letherread it," answered the old woman, holding out the letter to Hester. Hester took it and read—
"Madam,—This is to inform you that the rent of my cottage, at present occupied by you on a monthly tenancy at £9 per annum, will from the first of next month be raised to £15 per annum; also that the tenancy will not, after that date, carry with it a permission to let lodgings.—Yours truly, S. ROSEWARNE."
"Madam,—This is to inform you that the rent of my cottage, at present occupied by you on a monthly tenancy at £9 per annum, will from the first of next month be raised to £15 per annum; also that the tenancy will not, after that date, carry with it a permission to let lodgings.—Yours truly, S. ROSEWARNE."
"Madam,—This is to inform you that the rent of my cottage, at present occupied by you on a monthly tenancy at £9 per annum, will from the first of next month be raised to £15 per annum; also that the tenancy will not, after that date, carry with it a permission to let lodgings.—Yours truly, S. ROSEWARNE."
In the silence that followed Mrs. Trevarthen fixed her bright beady eyes steadily on Hester. "You've driven forth my son from me," she said at length, "and you're driving forth my lodger, and there's nobbut the almshouse left. Never a day's worry has my son Tom given to me, and never a ha'p'orth o' harm have we done to you. A foreigner you are and a stranger; the lad made me promise not to curse 'ee, and I won't. But get out of my sight, and the Lord deliver us from temptation!—Amen."
Poor Mr. Benny, who had written half a dozen enthusiastic verses on the opening of the new school, crushed them down in his pocket. He had been so proud of them, too!
They ran—
"This morning the weather was wreathèd in smiles.And we, correspondingly gay,Assembled together from several milesTo welcome our Opening Day.""The children were plastic in body and mind.Their faces and pinafores clean;And persons scholastic, in accents refined.With eloquence pointed the scene.""Blest scene! as its features we fondly recall,Come let us give thanks to the Lord!The Parents, the Teacher, the Managers all,Including the Clerk to the Board!"
"This morning the weather was wreathèd in smiles.And we, correspondingly gay,Assembled together from several milesTo welcome our Opening Day.""The children were plastic in body and mind.Their faces and pinafores clean;And persons scholastic, in accents refined.With eloquence pointed the scene.""Blest scene! as its features we fondly recall,Come let us give thanks to the Lord!The Parents, the Teacher, the Managers all,Including the Clerk to the Board!"
"This morning the weather was wreathèd in smiles.And we, correspondingly gay,Assembled together from several milesTo welcome our Opening Day.""The children were plastic in body and mind.Their faces and pinafores clean;And persons scholastic, in accents refined.With eloquence pointed the scene.""Blest scene! as its features we fondly recall,Come let us give thanks to the Lord!The Parents, the Teacher, the Managers all,Including the Clerk to the Board!"
Next morning when Hester arrived at the school she found Mr. Sam waiting for her, with Myra, Clem, and a lanky, freckled youth of about sixteen, whom he introduced as Archelaus Libby. She could not help a smile at this odd name, and the young man himself seemed to be conscious of its absurdity. He blushed, held out his hand and withdrew it again, dropped his hat and caught it awkwardly between his knees. Myra (who had made the sign of the cross as Hester entered) stood and regarded him with a cold, contemptuous interest. Her uncle presented the poor fellow with a proprietary wave of the hand, as though he had been a dumb animal recently purchased.
"I telegraphed to Liskeard on my own responsibility. The Managers may take me to task; but I felt it to be imperative that you should have a male teacher to support you, and at once. At all costs we must prevent a repetition of such scenes as yesterday's."
Doubtless he had done Hester a service, and she tried to express her thanks, but did not succeed very well. To begin with, her spirit being roused, she desired no help; and to judge by Mr. Archelaus Libby's looks, the help he could give promised to be ineffective. She did not say this, of course; and he gazed at her so wistfully that she reproached herself for thinking it.
Mr. Sam had no such scruples. "I telegraphed to Liskeard," he repeated. "There was no time for a personal interview." (He paused, with a deprecating wave of the hand, as who shall say, "And this is what they sent.") "If," he continued, "you find him unequal to maintaining discipline, we—ha—must take other steps. In other respects I find him satisfactory. He tells me he is of the Baptist persuasion, a believer in Total Immersion."
Hester saw Myra's mouth twitching. She herself broke into merry laughter.
"I hope it won't be necessary to go that length," she answered. "We will do our best, at any rate." She held out her hand again, and Archelaus Libby grasped it warmly.
On the whole, Archelaus Libby's best proved to be better than she had expected. The boys made a butt of him from the beginning, but could get no real advantage over one who laughed with them at his own discomfitures. He belonged to those meek ones who (it is promised) shall inherit the earth; and indeed, as the possessor of a two-guinea microscope—bought, as he explained to Hester, with his first earnings—he believed himself to inherit it already. This microscope, and the wonders he showed them under it, earned no little respect from the children. Also he had, without being aware of it, an extraordinary gift of mental arithmetic, and would rattle out the quotients of long compound division sums at alarming speed and with a rapid clicking sound at the back of his throat, as though some preternatural machinery were at work there. But most of all he conquered by sheer love of his kind and of every living creature. The lad seemed to brim over with love: he never arrived at forgiving anyone, being incapable of believing that anyone meant to offend. From the first he yielded to Hester a canine devotion which was inconvenient because it rendered him dumb.
Within a week Hester felt sure of herself and of the school, and confided her joy to Mr. Benny, who always met her at the ferry and accompanied her home to tea; for she was now installed as a lodger with the Benny household, greatly to Nuncey's delight. After tea Mr. Benny always withdrew to a little office overhanging the tideway; a wooden, felt-roofed shed in which he earned money from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m. by writing letters for seamen. In this interval the two girls walked or bathed, returning in time to put the children to bed and help Mrs. Benny with the supper. They talked much, but seldom about the school—all the cares of which Hester left behind her at the ferry crossing.
"And that's what I like about you," Nuncey confided. "You don't give yourself airs like other schoolmistresses."
"How many others do you know?" asked Hester.
"None; but I know what I'm talkin' about. You know more about poetry and such-like than Dad; I daresay you know as much as Uncle Josh; and yet no one would think it, to look at you."
"Thank you." Hester dropped her a curtsey. "And who is Uncle Josh?"
"He's Dad's brother, and well known in London. I believe he writes for the papers; 'connected with the press'—that's how Dad puts it. When Dad writes a poem he hasn't time to polish it; so he sends it up to Uncle Josh, and it comes back beautifully polished by return of post. Now do you know what I want?" asked Nuncey, falling back and eyeing her.
"What?"
"Guess."
"Really I can't." Hester knew by this time that Nuncey's thoughts moved without apparent connection.
"I want to see you out of mourning—well, in half-mourning, then. It ought to be pale grey, and there's a lilac ribbon in Bonaday's shop at this moment. You needn't pretend you don't care about these things, for I know better."
After supper, and on their way to and from the ferry, Mr. Benny would talk readily enough about the school. But on one point—the tribulation it was bringing upon Aunt Butson—he kept silence; for the thought of it made him unhappy. He knew that Hester was innocent, but he could not wholly acquit himself of complicity in the poor old woman's fate. Mr. Benny had a troublesome and tender conscience in all matters that concerned his duty towards his neighbour. The School Board was driving Mrs. Butson out of employ, taking away her scanty earnings; and he was Clerk to the School Board. To be sure, if he resigned to-morrow, another man would take his place, and Mrs. Butson be not one penny the better. Mr. Benny saw this, yet it did not ease his conscience wholly.
Hester, too, kept silence. Her way to the school led her past the little shanty (originally a carpenter's workshop) in which Aunt Butson taught. It stood a stone's-throw back from the village street, partly concealed by a clump of elms; but once or twice she had heard and spied children at play between the trees there—children with faces unfamiliar to her—and gathered that the old woman still kept her door open. As the days went by the date for raising Mrs. Trevarthen's rent, and the cottage still showed every sign of habitation, she took it for granted that Mr. Sam had relented—possibly in obedience to his promise not to persecute the young sailor. She did not know that, in serving his notice without consulting Peter Benny, Mr. Sam had made a trifling mistake; that Mrs. Trevarthen held her cottage on a quarterly tenancy, and could neither have her rent raised nor be evicted before Michaelmas. Hester would have been puzzled to say precisely what sealed her lips from inquiry. Partly, no doubt, she shrank from discovering a fresh obligation to Mr. Sam, whose unctuous handshake she was learning to detest. Tom Trevarthen had disappeared. His mother kept house unmolested. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? For the rest, the school absorbed most of her thoughts, and paid back interest in cheerfulness. The children were beginning to show signs of loyalty, and a teacher who has won loyalty has won everything. Myra alone stood aloof, sullen, impervious to kindness.
In truth, Myra was suffering. For the first time in their lives her will and Clem's had come into conflict; and Clem's revealed itself as unexpectedly, almost hopelessly, stubborn. That theVirtuous Ladyhad sailed for Quebec, carrying away Aunt Hannah, the one other person in the world who understood her, made little difference. A hundred Aunt Hannahs could not console her for this loss—for a loss she called it. "The woman is taking him from me!" She cried the words aloud to herself on her lonely walks, making the cattle in the fields, the horses in the stable, the small greyhound, even the fields and trees, confidants in her woe. "She is stealing you from me," she reproached Clem; "and you can't see that she is a witch! You don't love me any longer!" "I love you better than ever," protested poor Clem. "No, you don't, or you would choose between us. Say 'I hate her!'" But Clem shook his head. "I don't hate her; and besides, she isn't a witch."
She had been forbidden to speak to Calvin for a week. "My dear man," she answered Mr. Sam, to his no small astonishment, "do you thinkIwant to talk to the pimply creature? He tells fibs; and besides, he's a robber."
"You are a wicked child; and if you persist in this talk, I shall have to punish you."
"Are you going to beat me? Beat away. But it's true."
He did not beat her; but one day, meeting Hester on the hill as she walked to school, he went so far as to suggest that Myra's spirit needed taming. She had been allowed to run loose, and her behaviour at home caused him many searchings of heart. He made no doubt that her behaviour in school was scarcely more satisfactory.
Hester admitted that he surmised correctly.
He had never been blessed with a daughter of his own, and hardly knew what to do with an unruly girl. Might he leave the matter in Miss Marvin's hands?
"If," said Hester, "you are speaking of her behaviour in school, you certainly may. She is jealous, poor child, because her brother has taken a fancy to be fond of me. In her place I should be furious. But I think we are going to be friends."
"Some form of punishment—if I might suggest—"
"I don't know of any that meets the case," Hester answered gravely.
"I have often,"—he fastened on her that gaze of his which she most of all disliked—"I have oftentimes, of late especially, felt even Calvin to be a responsibility, without a mother's care." He went on from this to the suggestion he had hinted to Mrs. Purchase. Would Miss Marvin be prepared (for an honorarium) to give his son private lessons? Could she afford the time? "I shrink from exposing him to influences, so often malign, of a boarding-school. What I should most of all desire for him is a steady, sympathetic home influence, a—may I say it?—a motherly influence."
Hester at this moment, averting her eyes, was aware of an old woman a few yards away, coming up the road; a woman erect as a soldier, with strong, almost mannish features, and eyes that glared at her fiercely from under a washed-out blue sunbonnet. Mr. Sam gave her good-morning as she went by, but she neither answered nor seemed to hear him.
"Who is she?" Hester had almost asked, when the woman turned aside into a path leading to the shed among the elms.
"She'll have to shut up shop next week," said Mr. Sam, following Hester's gaze. "I declare, Miss Marvin, one would think the old woman had ill-wished you, by the way you are staring after her. Don't believe in witchcraft, I hope?"
"I have never seen her till now, and I do feel sorry for her."
"She's not fit to teach, and never was."
"She's setting me a lesson in punctuality, at any rate," said Hester, forcing a little laugh, glad of an excuse to end the conversation. But along the road and at intervals during the first and second lesson-hours the face of Mrs. Butson haunted her.
In the hour before dinner, while she sat among the little ones correcting their copy-books, the door-latch clicked, and she looked up with a start— to see the woman herself standing upon the threshold! Archelaus Libby, who had been chalking on the blackboard at lightning speed a line of figures for his mental arithmetic class, turned to announce them, and paused with a click in his throat which seemed to answer that of the latch. In the sudden hush Hester felt her cheek paling. Somehow she missed the courage with which she had met Tom Trevarthen.
"Good-morning!" said Mrs. Butson harshly. "'Tisn't forbidden to come in, I hope?"
"Good-morning," Hester found voice to answer. "You may come in, and welcome, if you wish us well."
"I'm Sarah Butson. As for wishing well or ill to 'ee, we'll leave that alone. I've come to listen, not to interrup'." She advanced into the room and pointed a finger at Archelaus Libby. "Is that your male teacher? He bain't much to look at, but I'm told he's terrible for sums."
"You shall judge for yourself. Go on with your lesson, Archelaus; and you, Mrs. Butson, take a seat if you will."
"No; I'll stand." Mrs. Butson shut her jaws firmly and treated the small scholars around her to a fierce, unwavering stare. Many winced, remembering her mercies of old. "Go on, young man," she commanded Archelaus.
He plunged into figures again, nervously at first. Soon he recovered his volubility, and, calling on one of the elder boys to name two rows of figures for division, wrote them out and dashed down the quotient; then flung in the working at top speed, showing how the quotient was obtained; next rubbed out all but the original divisor and dividend, and, swinging round upon the boys, raced them through the sum, his throat clicking as he appealed from one boy to another, urging them to answer faster and faster yet. "Yes, yes—but try to multiply in double figures—twice sixteen, thirty-two: it's no harder than four times eight—the tables don't really stop at twelve times. Now then—seventy-eight into three-twenty-six? You—you—you—what's that, Sunny Pascoe? Four times? Right—how many over? Fourteen. Now then, bring down the next figure, and that makes the new dividend."
Mrs. Butson passed her hand over Hester's desk. "You keep 'em well dusted," she observed, turning her back upon Archelaus and his calculations. Her angry-looking eyes travelled over desks, floor, walls, and the maps upon the walls, then back to the children.
"How many?" she asked.
"We have sixty-eight on the books."
"How many here to-day?"
"Sixty-six. There are two absent, with certificates. Would you like me to call the roll?"
"No. You've got 'em in hand, too, I see." She picked up a copy-book from the desk before her, examined it for a moment, and laid it down. "You like this work?" she asked, turning her eyes suddenly upon Hester.
"How else could one do it at all?"
"I hate it—yes, hate it," the old woman went on. "Though 'twas my living, I've hated it always. Yet I taught 'em well—you cross the ferry and ask schoolmaster Penrose if I did not. I taught 'em well; but you beat me—fair and square you do. Only there'll come a time—I warn you— when the hope and pride'll die out of you, and you'll wake an' wonder how to live out the day. I don't know much, but I know that time must come to all teachers. They never can tell when 'tis coming. After some holiday, belike, it catches 'em sudden. The new lot of children be no worse than the last, but they get treated worse because the teacher's come to end of tether. You take my advice and marry before that time comes."
"I don't think I shall ever marry."
"Oh yes, you will!" Aunt Butson's eyes seemed to burn into Hester's. "You're driving me out to work in the fields; but, marry or not, you'll give me all the revenge I look for." The old woman hunched her shoulders and made abruptly for the door. As it slammed behind her a weight seemed to fall upon Hester's heart and a sudden shadow across her day.