CHAPTER XJACK AND HIS MOTHER
Jack went home that night very sore on his back and in his feelings. He felt humiliated to be beaten like a dog, and even a dog feels degraded in being beaten. He told his mother about it—the tall, dignified, sweet-faced mother, patient in trouble and full of a goodness that did not talk much about goodness. She always took it for granted thatherboy would not do anything mean, and thus made a healthy atmosphere for a brave boy to grow in. Jack told her of his whipping, with some heat, while he sat at supper. She did not say much then, but after Jack’s evening chores were all finished, she sat down by the candlewhere he was trying to get out some sums, and questioned him carefully.
“Why didn’t you tell who did it?” she asked.
“Because it makes a boy mean to tell, and all the boys would have thought me a sneak.”
“It is a little hard to face a general opinion like that,” she said.
“But,” said Jack, “if I had told, the master would have whipped Columbus all the same, and the boys would probably have pounded him, too. I ought to have told beforehand,” said Jack, after a pause. “But I thought it was only some coffee-nuts that they had put in. The mean fellows, to let Columbus take a whipping for them! But the way Mr. Ball beats us is enough to make a boy mean and cowardly.”
After a long silence, the mother said: “I think we shall have to give it up, Jack.”
“What, mother?”
“The schooling for this winter. I don’t want you to go where boys are beaten in that way. In the morning, go and get your books and see what you can do at home.”
Then, after a long pause, in which neither liked to speak, Mrs. Dudley said:
“I want you to be an educated man. You learn quickly; you have a taste for books, and you will be happier if you get knowledge. If I could collect the money that Gray owes your father’s estate, or even a part of it, I should be able to keep you in school one winter after this. But there seems to be no hope for that.”
“But Gray is a rich man, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he has a good deal of property, but not in his own name. He persuaded your father, who was a kind-hearted and easy-natured man, to release a mortgage,promising to give him some other security the next week. But, meantime, he put his property in such a shape as to cheat all his creditors. I don’t think we shall ever get anything.”
“I am going to be an educated man, anyhow.”
“But you will have to go to work at something next fall,” said the mother.
“That will make it harder, but I mean to study a little every day. I wish I could get a chance to spend next winter in school.”
“We’ll see what can be done.”
And long after Jack went to bed that night the mother sat still by the candle with her sewing, trying to think what she could do to help her boy to get on with his studies.
Jack woke up after eleven o’clock, and saw her light still burning in the sitting-room.
“I say, mother,” he called out, “don’t you sit there worrying about me. We shall come through this all right.”
Some of Jack’s hopefulness got into the mother’s heart, and she took her light and went to bed.
Weary, and sore, and disappointed, Jack did not easily get to sleep himself after his cheerful speech to his mother. He lay awake long, making boy’s plans for his future. He would go and collect money by some hook or crook from the rascally Gray; he would make a great invention; he would discover a gold mine; he would find some rich cousin who would send him through college; he would——, but just then he grew more wakeful and realized that all his plans had no foundation of probability.
CHAPTER XICOLUMBUS AND HIS FRIENDS
When he waked up in the morning, Jack remembered that he had not seen Columbus Risdale go past the door after his cow the evening before, and he was afraid that he might be ill. Why had he not thought to go down and drive up the cow himself? It was yet early, and he arose and went down to the little rusty, brown, unpainted house in which the Risdales, who were poor people, had their home. Just as he pushed open the gate, Bob Holliday came out of the door, looking tired and sleepy.
“Hello, Bob!” said Jack. “How’s Columbus? Is he sick?”
“Awful sick,” said Bob. “Clean out of his head all night.”
“Have you been here all night?”
“Yes, I heerd he was sick last night, and I come over and sot up with him.”
“You good, big-hearted Bob!” said Jack. “You’re the best fellow in the world, I believe.”
“What a quare feller you air to talk, Jack,” said Bob, choking up. “Air you goin’ to school to-day?”
“No. Mother’d rather have me not go any more.”
“I’m not going any more. I hate old Ball. Neither’s Susan Lanham going. She’s in there,” and Bob made a motion toward the house with his thumb, and passed out of the gate, while Jack knocked at the door. He was admitted by Susan.
“Oh, Jack! I’m so glad to see you,” she whispered. “Columbus has asked for you a good many times during the night. You’ve stood by him splendidly.”
Jack blushed, but asked how Lummy was now.
“Out of his head most of the time. Bob Holliday stayed with him all night. What a good fellow Bob Holliday is!”
“I almost hugged him, just now,” said Jack, and Susan couldn’t help smiling at this frank confession.
Jack passed into the next room as stealthily as possible, that he might not disturb his friend, and paused by the door. Mrs. Risdale sat by the bedside of Columbus, who was sleeping uneasily, his curious big head and long, thin hair making a strange picture against the pillow. His face looked more meagre and his eyes more sunken than ever before, but there was a feverish flush on his wan cheeks, and the slender hands moved uneasily on the outside of the blue coverlet, the puny arms were bare to the elbows.
Mrs. Risdale beckoned Jack to come forward, and he came and stood at the bed-foot. Then Columbus opened his large eyes and fixed them on Jack for a few seconds.
“Come, Jack, dear old fellow,” he whispered.
Jack came and bent over him with tearful eyes, and the poor little reed-like arms were twined about his neck.
“Jack,” he sobbed, “the master’s right over there in the corner all the time, straightening out his long switches. He says he’s going to whip me again. But you won’t let him, will you, Jack, you good old fellow?”
“No, he shan’t touch you.”
“Let’s run away, Jack,” he said, presently. And so the poor little fellow went on, his great, disordered brain producing feverish images of terror from which hecontinually besought “dear good old Jack” to deliver him.
When at last he dropped again into a troubled sleep, Jack slipped away and drove up the Risdale cow, and then went back to his breakfast. He was a boy whose anger kindled slowly; but the more he thought about it, the more angry he became at the master who had given Columbus such a fright as to throw him into a brain fever, and at the “mean, sneaking contemptible villains,” as he hotly called them, who wouldn’t come forward and confess their trick, rather than to have the poor little lad punished.
“I suppose we ought to make some allowances,” his mother said, quietly.
“That’s what you always say, mother. You’re always making allowances.”
After breakfast and chores, Jack thought to go again to see his little friend. Onissuing from the gate, he saw Will Riley and Ben Berry waiting for him at the corner. Whether they meant to attack him or not he could not tell, but he felt too angry to care.
“I say, Jack,” said Riley, “how did you know who put the powder in the stove? Did Columbus tell you?”
“Mind your own business,” said Jack, in a tone not so polite as it might be. “The less you say about gunpowder, hereafter, the better for you both. Why didn’t you walk up and tell, and save that little fellow a beating?”
“Look here, Jack,” said Berry, “don’t you tell what you know about it. There’s going to be a row. They say that Doctor Lanham’s taken Susan, and all the other children, out of school, because the master thrashed Lummy, and they say Bob Holliday’s quit, and that you’re going to quit,and Doctor Lanham’s gone to work this morning to get the master put out at the end of the term. Mr. Ball didn’t know that Columbus was kin to the Lanhams, or he’d have let him alone, like he does the Lanhams and the Weathervanes. There is going to be a big row, and everybody’ll want to know who put the powder in the stove. We want you to be quiet about it.”
“Youdo?” said Jack, with a sneer. “Youdo?”
“Yes, we do,” said Riley, coaxingly.
“You do?Youcome tomeand ask me to keep it secret, after letting me and that poor little baby take your whipping! You want me to hide what you did, when that poor little Columbus lies over there sick abed and like to die, all because you sneaking scoundrels let him be whipped for what you did!”
“Is he sick?” said Riley, in terror.
“Going to die, I expect,” said Jack, bitterly.
“Well,” said Ben Berry, “you be careful what you say about us, or we’ll get Pewee to get even with you.”
“Oh, that’s your game! You think you can scare me, do you?”
Jack grew more and more angry. Seeing a group of school-boys on the other side of the street, he called them over.
“Look here, boys,” said Jack, “I took a whipping yesterday to keep from telling on these fellows, and now they have the face to ask me not to tell that they put the powder in the stove, and they promise me a beating from Pewee if I do. These are the two boys that let a poor sickly baby take the whipping they ought to have had. They have just as good as killed him, I suppose, and now they come sneaking around here and trying to scare me inkeeping still about it. I didn’t back down from the master, and I won’t from Pewee. Oh, no! I won’t tell anybody. But if any of you boys should happen to guess that Will Riley and Ben Berry were the cowards who did that mean trick, I am not going to say they weren’t. It wouldn’t be of any use to deny it. There are only two boys in school mean enough to play such a contemptible trick as that.”
Riley and Berry stood sheepishly silent, but just here Pewee came in sight, and seeing the squad of boys gathered around Jack, strode over quickly and pushed his sturdy form into the midst.
“Pewee,” said Riley, “I think you ought to pound Jack. He says you can’t back him down.”
“I didn’t,” said Jack. “I saidyoucouldn’t scare me out of telling who tried to blow up the school-house stove, and letother boys take the whipping, by promising me a drubbing from Pewee Rose. If Pewee wants to put himself in as mean a crowd as yours, and be your puppy-dog to fight for you, let him come on. He’s a fool if he does, that’s all I have to say. The whole town will want to ship you two fellows off before night, and Pewee isn’t going to fight your battles. What do you think, Pewee, of fellows that put powder in a stove where they might blow up a lot of little children? What do you think of two fellows that want me to keep quiet after they let little Lum Risdale take a whipping for them, and that talk about setting you on to me if I tell?”
Thus brought face to face with both parties, King Pewee only looked foolish and said nothing.
Jack had worked himself into such a passion that he could not go to Risdale’s,but returned to his own home, declaring that he was going to tell everybody in town. But when he entered the house and looked into the quiet, self-controlled face of his mother, he began to feel cooler.
“Let us remember that some allowances are to be made for such boys,” was all that she said.
“That’s what you always say, Mother,” said Jack, impatiently. “I believe you’d make allowances for the Old Boy himself.”
“That would depend on his bringing up,” smiled Mrs. Dudley. “Some people have bad streaks naturally, and some have been cowed and brutalized by ill-treatment, and some have been spoiled by indulgence.”
Jack felt more calm after a while. He went back to the bedside of Columbus, but he couldn’t bring himself to make allowances.
CHAPTER XIIGREENBANK WAKES UP
If the pigeons had not crossed the valley on Monday, nobody would have played truant, and if nobody had played truant on Monday, there would not have been occasion to whip three boys on Tuesday morning, and if Ben Berry and Riley had escaped a beating on Tuesday morning, they would not have thought of putting gunpowder into the stove on Wednesday at noon, and if they had omitted that bad joke, Columbus would not have got into trouble and run away from school, and if he had escaped the fright and the flight, he might not have had the fever, and the town would not have been waked up, and other things would not have happened.
So then, you see, this world of ours is just like the House that Jack Built: one thing is tied to another and another to that, and that to this, and this to something, and something to something else, and so on to the very end of all things.
So it was that the village was thrown into a great excitement as the result of a flock of innocent pigeons going over the heads of some lazy boys. In the first place, Susan Lanham talked about things. She talked to her aunts, and she talked to her uncles, and, above all, she talked to her father. Now Susan was the brightest girl in the town, and she had a tongue, as all the world knew, and when she set out to tell people what a brute the old master was, how he had beaten two innocent boys, how bravely Jack had carried himself, how frightened little Columbus was, and how sick it had made him, and how mean theboys were to put the powder there, and then to let the others take the whipping,—I say, when Susan set out to tell all these things, in her eloquent way, to everybody she knew, you might expect a waking up in the sleepy old town. Some of the people took Susan’s side and removed their children from the school, lest they, too, should get a whipping and run home and have brain fever. But many stood up for the old master, mostly because they were people of the sort that never can bear to see anything changed. “The boys ought to have told who put the powder in the stove,” they said. “It served them right.”
“How could the master know that Jack and Columbus did not do it themselves?” said others. “Maybe they did!”
“Don’t tell me!” cried old Mrs. Horne. “Don’t tell me! Boys can’t be managed without whipping, and plenty of it. ‘Bringup a child and away he goes,’ as the Bible says. When you hire a master, you want amaster, says I.”
“What a tongue that Sue Lanham has got!” said Mr. Higbie, Mr. Ball’s brother-in-law.
The excitement spread over the whole village. Doctor Lanham talked about it, and the ministers, and the lawyers, and the loafers in the stores, and the people who came to the post-office for their letters. Of course, it broke out furiously in the “Maternal Association,” a meeting of mothers held at the house of one of the ministers.
“Mr. Ball can do every sum in the arithmetic,” urged Mrs. Weathervane.
“He’s a master hand at figures, they do say,” said Mother Brownson.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dudley, “I don’t doubt it. Jack’s back is covered with figures of Mr. Ball’s making. For my part, I shouldrather have a master that did his figuring on a slate.”
Susan Lanham got hold of this retort, and took pains that it should be known all over the village.
When Greenbank once gets waked up on any question, it never goes to sleep until that particular question is settled. But it doesn’t wake up more than once or twice in twenty years. Most of the time it is only talking in its sleep. Now that Greenbank had its eyes open for a little time, it was surprised to see that while the cities along the river had all adopted graded schools,—de-graded schools, as they were called by the people opposed to them,—and while even the little villages in the hill country had younger and more enlightened teachers, the county-town of Greenbank had made no advance. It employed yet, under the rule of President Fillmore, thesame hard old stick of a master that had beaten the boys in the log school-house in the days of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. But, now it was awake, Greenbank kept its eyes open on the school question. The boys wrote on the fences, in chalk:
DOWN WITH OLD BAWL!
and thought the bad spelling of the name a good joke, while men and women began to talk about getting a new master.
Will Riley and Ben Berry had the hardest time. For the most part they stayed at home during the excitement, only slinking out in the evening. The boys nicknamed them “Gunpowder cowards,” and wrote the words on the fences. Even the loafers about the street asked them whether Old Ball had given them that whipping yet, and how they liked “powder and Ball.”
CHAPTER XIIIPROFESSOR SUSAN
Mr. Ball did not let go easily. He had been engaged for the term, and he declared that he would go on to the end of the term, if there should be nothing but empty benches. In truth, he and his partisans hoped that the storm would blow over and the old man be allowed to go on teaching and thrashing as heretofore. He had a great advantage in that he had been trained in all the common branches better than most masters, and was regarded as a miracle of skill in arithmetical calculations. He even knew how to survey land.
Jack was much disappointed to miss his winter’s schooling, and there was no probability that he would be able to attendschool again. He went on as best he could at home, but he stuck fast on some difficult problems in the middle of the arithmetic. Columbus had by this time begun to recover his slender health, and he was even able to walk over to Jack’s house occasionally. Finding Jack in despair over some of his “sums,” he said:
“Why don’t you ask Susan Lanham to show you? I believe she would; and she has been clean through the arithmetic, and she is ’most as good as the master himself.”
“I don’t like to,” said Jack. “She wouldn’t want to take the trouble.”
But the next morning Christopher Columbus managed to creep over to the Lanhams:
“Cousin Sukey,” he said, coaxingly, “I wish you’d do something for me. I want to ask a favor of you.”
"COUSIN SUKEY," SAID LITTLE COLUMBUS, "I WANT TO ASK A FAVOR OF YOU."“COUSIN SUKEY,” SAID LITTLE COLUMBUS, “I WANT TO ASK A FAVOR OF YOU.”
“What is it, Columbus?” said Sue.“Anything you ask shall be given, to the half of my kingdom!” and she struck an attitude, as Isabella of Castile, addressing the great Columbus, with the dust-brush for a sceptre, and the towel, which she had pinned about her head, for a crown.
“You are so funny,” he said, with a faint smile. “But I wish you’d be sober a minute.”
“Haven’t had but one cup of coffee this morning. But what do you want?”
“Jack——”
“Oh, yes, it’s always Jack with you. But that’s right—Jack deserves it.”
“Jack can’t do his sums, and he won’t ask you to help him.”
“And so he got you to ask?”
“No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t let me, if he knew. He thinks a young lady like you wouldn’t want to take the trouble to help him.”
“Do you tell that stupid Jack, that if he doesn’t want to offend me so that I’ll never, never forgive him, he is to bring his slate and pencil over here after supper this evening. And you’ll come, too, with your geography. Yours truly, Susan Lanham, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science in the Greenbank Independent and Miscellaneous Academy. Do you hear?”
“All right.” And Columbus, smiling faintly, went off to tell Jack the good news. That evening Susan had, besides her own brother and two sisters, two pupils who learned more arithmetic than they would have gotten in the same time from Mr. Ball, though she did keep them laughing at her drollery. The next evening, little Joanna Merwin joined the party, and Professor Susan felt quite proud of her “academy,” as she called it.
Bob Holliday caught the infection, and went to studying at home. As he was not so far advanced as Jack, he contented himself with asking Jack’s help when he was in trouble. At length, he had a difficulty that Jack could not solve.
“Why don’t you take that to the professor?” asked Jack. “I’ll ask her to show you.”
“I dursn’t,” said Bob, with a frightened look.
“Nonsense!” said Jack.
That evening, when the lessons were ended, Jack said:
“Professor Susan, there was a story in the old First Reader we had in the first school that I went to, about a dog who had a lame foot. A doctor cured his foot, and some time after, the patient brought another lame dog to the doctor, and showed by signs that he wanted this other dog cured, too.”
“That’s rather a good dog-story,” saidSusan. “But what made you think of it?”
“Because I’m that first dog.”
“You are?”
“Yes. You’ve helped me, but there’s Bob Holliday. I’ve been helping him, but he’s got to a place where I don’t quite understand the thing myself. Now Bob wouldn’t dare ask you to help him——”
“Bring him along. How the Greenbank Academy grows!” laughed Susan, turning to her father.
Bob was afraid of Susan at first—his large fingers trembled so much that he had trouble to use his slate-pencil. But by the third evening his shyness had worn off, so that he got on well.
One evening, after a week of attendance, he was missing. The next morning he came to Jack’s house with his face scratched and his eye bruised.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jack.
“Well, you see, yesterday I was at the school-house at noon, and Pewee, egged on by Riley, said something he oughtn’t to, about Susan, and I couldn’t stand there and hear that girl made fun of, and so I up and downed him, and made him take it back. I can’t go till my face looks better, you know, for I wouldn’t want her to know anything about it.”
But the professor heard all about it from Joanna, who had it from one of the school-boys. Susan sent Columbus to tell Bob that she knew all about it, and that he must come back to school.
“So you’ve been fighting, have you?” she said, severely, when Bob appeared. The poor fellow was glad she took that tone—if she had thanked him he wouldn’t have been able to reply.
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t you do it any more. It’s very wrong to fight. It makes boys brutal. A girl with ability enough to teach the Greenbank Academy can take care of herself, and she doesn’t want her scholars to fight.”
“All right,” said Bob. “But,” he muttered, “I’ll thrash him all the same, and more than ever, if he ever says anything like that again.”
CHAPTER XIVCROWING AFTER VICTORY
Greenbank was awake, and the old master had to go. Mr. Weathervane stood up for him as long as he thought that the excitement was temporary. But when he found that Greenbank really was awake, and not just talking in its sleep, as it did for the most part, he changed sides,—not all at once, but by degrees. At first he softened down a little, “hemmed and hawed,” as folks say. He said he did not know but that Mr. Ball had been hasty, but he meant well. The next day he took another step, and said that the old master meant well, but he wasoftentoo hasty in his temper. The next week he let himselfdown another peg in saying that “maybe” the old man meant well, but he was altogether too hot in his temper for a schoolmaster. A little while later, he found out that Mr. Ball’s way of teaching was quite out of date. Before a month had elapsed, he was sure that the old curmudgeon ought to be put out, and thus at last Mr. Weathervane found himself where he liked to be, in the popular party.
And so the old master came to his last day in the brick school-house. Whatever feelings he may have had in leaving behind him the scenes of his twenty-five years of labor, he said nothing. He only compressed his lips a little more tightly, scowled as severely as ever, removed his books and pens from his desk, gave a last look at his long beech switches on the wall, turned the key in the door of the school-house, carried it to Mr. Weathervane, received hispay, and walked slowly home to the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. Higbie.
The boys had resolved to have a demonstration. All their pent-up wrath against the master now found vent, since there was no longer any danger that the old man would have a chance to retaliate. They would serenade him. Bob Holliday was full of it. Harry Weathervane was very active. He was going to pound on his mother’s bread-pan. Every sort of instrument for making a noise was brought into requisition. Dinner-bells, tin-pails, conch-shell dinner-horns, tin-horns, and even the village bass-drum, were to be used.
Would Jack go? Bob came over to inquire. All the boys were going to celebrate the downfall of a harsh master. He deserved it for beating Columbus. So Jack resolved to go.
But after the boys had departed, Jackbegan to doubt whether he ought to go or not. It did not seem quite right; yet his feelings had become so enlisted in the conflict for the old man’s removal, that he had grown to be a bitter partisan, and the recollection of all he had suffered, and of all Columbus had endured during his sickness, reconciled Jack to the appearance of crowing over a fallen foe, which this burlesque serenade would have. Nevertheless, his conscience was not clear on the point, and he concluded to submit the matter to his mother, when she should come home to supper.
Unfortunately for Jack, his mother stayed away to tea, sending Jack word that he would have to get his own supper, and that she would come home early in the evening. Jack ate his bowl of bread and milk in solitude, trying to make himself believe that his mother would approve of his takingpart in the “shiveree” of the old master. But when he had finished his supper, he concluded that if his mother did not come home in time for him to consult her, he would remain at home. He drew up by the light and tried to study, but he longed to be out with the boys. After a while Bob Holliday and Harry Weathervane came to the door and importuned Jack to come with them. It was lonesome at home; it would be good fun to celebrate the downfall of the old master’s cruel rule, so, taking down an old dinner-bell, Jack went off to join the rest. He was a little disgusted when he found Riley, Pewee, and Ben Berry in the company, but once in the crowd, there was little chance to back out with credit. The boys crept through the back alleys until they came in front of Mr. Higbie’s house, at half past eight o’clock. There was but one light visible,and that was in Mr. Ball’s room. Jack dropped behind, a little faint of heart about the expedition. He felt sure in himself that his mother would shake her head if she knew of it. At length, at a signal from Bob, the tin pans, big and little, the skillet-lids grinding together, the horns, both conch-shell and tin, and the big bass-drum, set up a hideous clattering, banging, booming, roaring, and racketing. Jack rang his dinner-bell rather faintly, and stood back behind all the rest
“Jack’s afraid,” said Pewee. “Why don’t you come up to the front, like a man?”
Jack could not stand a taunt like this, but came forward into the cluster of half-frightened peace-breakers. Just then, the door of Mr. Higbie’s house was opened, and some one came out.
“It’s Mr. Higbie,” said Ben Berry. “He’s going to shoot.”
“It’s Bugbee, the watchman, going to arrest us,” said Pewee.
“It’s Mr. Ball himself,” said Riley, “and he’ll whip us all.” And he fled, followed pell-mell by the whole crowd, excepting Jack, who had a constitutional aversion to running away. He only slunk up close to the fence and so stood still.
“Hello! Who are you?” The voice was not that of Mr. Higbie, nor that of the old master, nor of the watchman, Bugbee. With some difficulty, Jack recognized the figure of Doctor Lanham. “Oh, it’s Jack Dudley, is it?” said the doctor, after examining him in the feeble moonlight.
“Yes,” said Jack, sheepishly.
“You’re the one that got that whipping from the old master. I don’t wonder you came out to-night.”
“I do,” said Jack, “and I would rather now that I had taken another such whipping than to find myself here.”
“Well, well,” said the doctor, “boys will be boys.”
“And fools will be fools, I suppose,” said Jack.
“Mr. Ball is very ill,” continued the doctor. “Find the others and tell them they mustn’t come here again to-night, or they’ll kill him. I wouldn’t have had this happen for anything. The old man’s just broken down by the strain he has been under. He has deserved it all, but I think you might let him have a little peace now.”
“So do I,” said Jack, more ashamed of himself than ever.
The doctor went back into the house, and Jack Dudley and his dinner-bell started off down the street in search of Harry Weathervane and his tin pan, and Bob Holliday and his skillet-lids, and Ben Berry and the bass-drum.
“Hello, Jack!” called out Bob from analley. “You stood your ground the best of all, didn’t you?”
“I wish I’d stood my ground in the first place against you and Harry, and stayed at home.”
“Why, what’s the matter? Who was it?”
By this time the other boys were creeping out of their hiding-places and gathering about Jack.
“Well, it was the doctor,” said Jack. “Mr. Ball’s very sick and we’ve ’most killed him; that’s all. We’re a pack of cowards to go tooting at a poor old man when he’s already down, and we ought to be kicked, every one of us. That’s the way I feel about it,” and Jack set out for home, not waiting for any leave-taking with the rest, who, for their part, slunk away in various directions, anxious to get their instruments of noise and torment hidden away out of sight.
Jack stuck the dinner-bell under the hayin the stable-loft, whence he could smuggle it into the house before his mother should get down-stairs in the morning. Then he went into the house.
“Where have you been?” asked Mrs. Dudley. “I came home early so that you needn’t be lonesome.”
“Bob Holliday and Harry Weathervane came for me, and I found it so lonesome here that I went out with them.”
“Have you got your lessons?”
“No, ma’am,” said Jack, sheepishly.
He was evidently not at ease, but his mother said no more. He went off to bed early, and lay awake a good part of the night. The next morning he brought the old dinner-bell and set it down in the very middle of the breakfast-table. Then he told his mother all about it. And she agreed with him that he had done a very mean thing.
CHAPTER XVAN ATTEMPT TO COLLECT
Three times a week the scholars of the “Greenbank Academy” met at the house of Dr. Lanham to receive instruction from Professor Susan, for the school trustees could not agree on a new teacher. Some of the people wanted one thing, and some another; a lady teacher was advocated and opposed; a young man, an old man, a new-fashioned man, an old-fashioned man, and no teacher at all for the rest of the present year, so as to save money, were projects that found advocates. The division of opinion was so great that the plan of no school at all was carried because no other could be. So Susan’s class went on for amonth, and grew to be quite a little society, and then it came to an end.
One evening, when the lessons were finished, Professor Susan said: “I am sorry to tell you that this is the last lesson I can give.”
And then they all said “Aw-w-w-w-w!” in a melancholy way.
“I am going away to school myself,” Susan went on. “My father thinks I ought to go to Mr. Niles’s school at Port William.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d need to go any more,” said Joanna Merwin. “I thought you knew everything.”
“Oh, bless me!” cried Susan.
In former days the people of the interior—the Mississippi Valley—which used then to be called “the West,” were very desirous of education for their children. But good teachers were scarce. Ignorant and pretentiousmen, incompetent wanderers from New England, who had grown tired of clock-peddling, or tin-peddling, and whose whole stock was assurance, besides impostors of other sorts, would get places as teachers because teachers were scarce and there were no tests of fitness. Now and then a retired Presbyterian minister from Scotland or Pennsylvania, or a college graduate from New England, would open a school in some country town. Then people who could afford it would send their children from long distances to board near the school, and learn English grammar, arithmetic, and, in some cases, a little Latin, or, perhaps, to fit themselves for entrance to some of the sturdy little country colleges already growing up in that region. At Port William, in Kentucky, there was at this time an old minister, Mr. Niles, who really knew what he professed to teach,and it was to his school that Dr. Lanham was now about to send Susan; Harvey Collins and Henry Weathervane had already entered the school. But for poor boys like Jack, and Bob Holliday, and Columbus, who had no money with which to pay board, there seemed no chance.
The evening on which Susan’s class broke up, there was a long and anxious discussion between Jack Dudley and his mother.
“You see, Mother, if I could get even two months in Mr. Niles’s school, I could learn some Latin, and if I once get my fingers into Latin, it is like picking bricks out of a pavement; if I once get a start, I can dig it out myself. I am going to try to find some way to attend that school.”
But the mother only shook her head.
“Couldn’t we move to Port William?” said Jack.
“How could we? Here we have a house of our own, which couldn’t easily be rented. There we should have to pay rent, and where is the money to come from?”
“Can’t we collect something from Gray?”
Again Mrs. Dudley shook her head.
But Jack resolved to try the hardhearted debtor, himself. It was now four years since Jack’s father had been persuaded to release a mortgage in order to relieve Francis Gray from financial distress. Gray had promised to give other security, but his promise had proved worthless. Since that time he had made lucky speculations and was now a man rather well off, but he kept all his property in his wife’s name, as scoundrels and fraudulent debtors usually do. All that Jack and his mother had to show for the one thousand dollars with four years’ interest due them, was a judgment against Francis Gray, with thesheriff’s return of “no effects” on the back of the writ of execution against the property “of the aforesaid Francis Gray.” For how could you get money out of a man who was nothing in law but an agent for his wife?
But Jack believed in his powers of persuasion, and in the softness of the human heart. He had never had to do with a man in whom the greed for money had turned the heart to granite.
Two or three days later Jack heard that Francis Gray, who lived in Louisville, had come to Greenbank. Without consulting his mother, lest she should discourage him, Jack went in pursuit of the slippery debtor. He had left town, however, to see his fine farm, three miles away, a farm which belonged in law to Mrs. Gray, but which belonged of right to Francis Gray’s creditors.
Jack found Mr. Gray well-dressed andof plausible manners. It was hard to speak to so fine a gentleman on the subject of money. For a minute, Jack felt like backing out. But then he contrasted his mother’s pinched circumstances with Francis Gray’s abundance, and a little wholesome anger came to his assistance. He remembered, too, that his cherished projects for getting an education were involved, and he mustered courage to speak.
“Mr. Gray, my name is John Dudley.”
Jack thought that there was a sign of annoyance on Gray’s face at this announcement.
“You borrowed a thousand dollars of my father once, I believe.”
“Yes, that is true. Your father was a good friend of mine.”
“He released a mortgage so that you could sell a piece of property when you were in trouble.”
“Yes, your father was a good friend to me. I acknowledge that. I wish I had money enough to pay that debt. It shall be the very first debt paid when I get on my feet again, and I expect to get on my feet, as sure as I live.”
“But, you see, Mr. Gray, while my mother is pinched for money, you have plenty.”
“It’s all Mrs. Gray’s money. She has plenty. I haven’t anything.”
“But I want to go to school to Port William. My mother is too poor to help me. If you could let me have twenty-five dollars——”
“But, you see, I can’t. I haven’t got twenty-five dollars to my name, that I can control. But by next New Year’s I mean to pay your mother the whole thousand that I owe her.”
This speech impressed Jack a little, butremembering how often Gray had broken such promises, he said:
“Don’t you think it a little hard that you and Mrs. Gray are well off, while my mother is so poor, all because you won’t keep your word given to my father?”
“But, you see, I haven’t any money, excepting what Mrs. Gray lets me have,” said Mr. Gray.
“She seems to let you have what you want. Don’t you think, if you coaxed her, she would lend you twenty-five dollars till New Year’s, to help me go to school one more term?”
Francis Gray was a little stunned by this way of asking it. For a moment, looking at the entreating face of the boy, he began to feel a disposition to relent a little. This was new and strange for him. To pay twenty-five dollars that he was not obliged by any self-interest to pay, wouldhave been an act contrary to all his habits and to all the business maxims in which he had schooled himself. Nevertheless, he fingered his papers a minute in an undecided way, and then he said that he couldn’t do it. If he began to pay creditors in that way “it would derange his business.”
“But,” urged Jack, “think how much my father deranged his business to oblige you, and now you rob me of my own money, and of my chance to get an education.”
Mr. Gray was a little ruffled, but he got up and went out of the room. When Jack looked out of the window a minute later, Gray was riding away down the road without so much as bidding the troublesome Jack good-morning.
There was nothing for Jack to do but to return to town and make the best of it. But all the way back, the tired and discouragedboy felt that his last chance of becoming an educated man had vanished. He told his mother about his attempt on Mr. Gray’s feelings and of his failure. They discussed the matter the whole evening, and could see no chance for Jack to get the education he wanted.
“I mean to die a-trying,” said Jack, doggedly, as he went off to bed.