THE TURKEY MOGUL ARRIVES.
I studied Becky Weir in school, the next day, with special interest. She was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with the stately, substantial presence of one of nature's own goddesses. She had a fresh, constant color in her cheeks, a pure, low forehead, and eyes that were clear, gray, and large, but with a strangely appealing, helplessly animal expression in them, I fancied, as she lifted them, oft-times, to mine. She was distinguished among my young disciples by the faithful, though evidently labored and wearisome attention, she gave to her books.
Her glance, bent on some small wretch who was misbehaving, had a peculiarly significant force. The little ones all seemed to love her and to stand rather in awe of her, too.
Entering the school-room in the morning, she discovered a network of strings, which one Lemuel Biddy had artfully laid between the desks, intending thereby to waylay and prostrate his human victim, and stooping down, she boxed the miscreant, not cruelly but effectively, on the ears. I was surprised to see that the boy seemed to regard this infliction as the simple and natural award of justice, bowed his head and wept penitently, and was subdued for some time afterward.
To me, whose earliest years had been guided and illuminated on the principle that reason and persuasion alone are to be used in the training of the tender twig, this little occurrence afforded food for serious wonder and reflection. I doubted if the logic of the sages or the wooing of the celestial seraphim would have wrought with such convincing power on the mind and ears of Lemuel Biddy.
If Rebecca perchance, after painfully protracted exertions, succeeded in working out some simple problem in arithmetic, her slate containing the solution was freely handed about among her unaspiring comrades; so that I judged her to be "weakly generous" as well as "plodding,"—qualities not of a high order, I esteemed, yet by no means insuperable barriers to friendship when found to enter more or less largely into the composition of one's friends.
There was something in my novel relation to the girl as her teacher peculiarly fascinating to me. At recess she remained in her seat and kept quietly at her work.
I went down and stood over her. "Can I help you, my dear?" I said.
Whatever might have been the pedantic or obtrusively condescending quality of those words, Rebecca seemed to find nothing distasteful in them. She looked up with a "Thank you," and a pleased, trustful face like a child's. "I can't do this one," said she. "I've finished the rest, but this wouldn't come right, somehow."
It was a sum in simple addition. I could not help a feeling of deep surprise and commiseration that one of Rebecca's age should have stumbled at it at all, but I essayed to examine it very closely and worked it out for her as slowly as possible. "Do you see your mistake?" I said.
She blushed painfully. The tears almost stood in her eyes.
"Yes, and I knew you'd have to find out how dull I was," she said; "but I dreaded it. When Miss Waite was here, mother was sick and I didn't go to school at all, and Miss Waite took me for a friend; and I told mother I'd most rather not go to school to you, for Miss Waite said you'd be a real friend, and I knew you wouldn't want me when you found how dull I was."
I looked at the girl, and a bright, hesitating smile woke in her face.
"Do you know, Rebecca," I said, "I don't choose my friends for their mental qualifications—for what they know; I select them just as people do horses—by their teeth. Let me see yours."
Rebecca laughed most musically, thus disclosing two brilliant rows of ivories. I had noticed them before.
"You'll do!" I exclaimed, lightly. "I take you into my heart of hearts. Now, what is your standard of choice? What charming characteristic do you First require in a friend, Rebecca?"
"Oh!" said she, gasping a little and speaking very slowly; "I—don't—know. I—don't—think—I've got any."
"Don't be afraid lest you shall guess something that I have not, my dear," I said; "You can hardly go astray. Begin with modesty, if you please, truly the chief of virtues."
Rebecca caught quickly the meaning in my tone, and answered with a low ripple of laughter. When I urged her, she grew gravely embarrassed.
"Well," said she; "I don't think I should want anybody that I thought I couldn't ever help them any, you know. That wouldn't ever need me, I mean, and I know," she went on more hastily; "it seems funny to say that to you, because it seems as though there wasn't anything that I could ever do for you—because you—you seem—not to need anybody—but I didn't know but some time—there might be something—I thought—maybe—some time."
Rebecca paused and looked up at me with that pitifully beseeching expression in her eyes.
"Oh, yes," I answered, still carelessly; "no doubt I shall be a great burden to you in time. But you do help me now, dear, by your conduct in school. You helped me this morning when you boxed Lemuel Biddy's ears. I shall have to take boxing lessons of you."
"You be the scholar," Rebecca answered quickly, her lips parting again with a merry outburst of laughter.
"Wretch!" said I, well pleased but affecting a tone of deep severity; "you must not be saucy to your teacher! I shall keep you in the rest of your recess for that.
"Do you like to study, Rebecca?" I added presently.
"No-o," said she, much abashed at the admission, and yet evidently incapable of speaking otherwise than according to the simple dictates of her conscience. "I don't think I should care anything about it if it didn't make you so dull not to. I mean," she continued; "perhaps I might 'a' liked it if I'd been to school right along, but we never did. And I was to the mills up to Taunton. I didn't stay long there. Then mother was sick. They don't any of the scholars be let to go very regular. Sometimes they're wanted to work out. So they forget. So they don't care much, I think. They get to dreading it. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think it so much blame—our bein' so backward."
"It is the faithful improvement of what opportunities we have, Rebecca," I began and then paused, somewhat confused by the throng of lively reminiscences which suddenly crowded my mental horoscope. "You are young yet, my dear," I concluded gravely, with a resigned sigh for my own departed youth; "you can make up for lost time. It is pleasant to give, but there may be circumstances in which it is our duty imperatively to receive. You must let me do all I can for you this winter. I do want you for a friend, but I would rather it should be on these plainly implied conditions."
Rebecca had been studying my face, thoughtfully, with a still expression of wonder.
"I'll try to learn," said she, slowly. "I'll do anything you want me to."
"Do you like to read?" I inquired, in a brighter tone.
"Stories?" said Rebecca, a sparkle waking in her eyes.
"Stories mixed with other things," I insisted, gently; and was then compelled to wonder how many of those "other things" had found their way into the literary appointment of my trunk.
"I'll try," said Rebecca.
"Come to the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration.
"I'd rather you would," said Rebecca, obediently.
To inflict this particular sort of patronage was a delightfully new experience for me. The glaring inconsistencies which confronted me at every turn only gave a heightened zest to the pursuit.
When I went to the door to blow the horn I felt that Rebecca already regarded me as her patron, guide, and spiritual mentor, and I was seriously resolved to fill these positions hopefully for her and with credit to myself. With respect to the rest of my flock, I felt a different sort of interest—the wide-awake concern of one who finds himself suddenly perched on the back of a mettlesome, untried steed.
Any one member of that benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant mass, the aspect of the field was appalling.
I was especially impressed with this view of the case when I went to toot them in from those free and reckless diversions in, which their souls expanded and their bodies became as the winged creatures of the earth.
The horn was still an object of terror to me, though experience had made me wise enough to institute, on all occasions, a careful preliminary search for buttons.
Its blast, freighted with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart, and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the "Dar' to be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!" which floated across the lane, had but a doubtfully inspiriting effect.
I felt, indeed, like a Daniel doomed to convocate my own lions, and lacking that faith in a preserving Providence which is believed to have cheered and elevated the spirit of the ancient prophet, I confidently expected, on the whole, to be devoured.
Gathered into their den, my lively herd gasped some moments as though suffering the last loud agony of expiring breath, and then, bethinking them of that only one of their free and native elements now obtainable, they sent up a universal cry for "water!"
Ah! what to do with them through the long hours of the day—beautiful creatures! by no means unlovable, with their bright, clear eyes, their restless, restless feet, their overflowing spirits; their bodies all alive, but with minds unfitted by birth, unskilled by domestic discipline, to any sort of earnest and prolonged effort. Long, weary hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired, tired, tired!
The parents of the children "dropped in" often at the Ark, and savored the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations on methods of discipline.
"I want my children whipped," said Mr. Randall Alden. "That's what they need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any—and I tell the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in the school."
"Ye can't drive Milton P.," said that hopeful's mother. "He's been drove so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him, nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be no trouble in the school."
"Well," said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall, angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always made out to mind by doin' pretty much as they was a mind to. They're smart boys, too," she added, with sincere pride; "but they don't take to larnin'. I never see sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog, and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and so Sim, says he,—I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man, he tried it, and in the course of a day or two, he come around to Sim, and wanted to know if he couldn't go back to clarin' bog again."
Emily took in the broadly contemplative expression on Grandma Keeler's benign features, and then winked at me facetiously: "I tell 'em if they was all like that," said she; "and I guess they be, pretty much, they might as well be out o' doors as in, and less worryin' to the teacher."
It might have been the third day of my labors in Wallencamp that a man, having the appearance of a lame giant, entered the school-room, and advanced to meet me with an imposing dignity of mien. He held captive, with one powerful hand, a stubbornly speechless, violently struggling boy. I recognized the man as Godfrey Cradlebow, the handsome fiddler's father, and the boy was none other than the imp whose eyes, scorching and defiant now, had first sent mocking glances back at me while their light-limbed owner kicked out a jaunty rigadoon from under the encircling folds of his sacerdotal vestments.
"Miss Hungerford, I beg your pardon," said the elder Cradlebow, with a distinct, refined enunciation foreign to the native element of Wallencamp, whose ordinary locution had something of a Hoosier accent "After a good deal of trouble in catching him, I have finally succeeded in bringing you in this—a—this little dev"—he made an impressive pause, patted his fiery offspring on the head with fatherly dignity, and eyed him, at once doubtfully and reflectively.
I was interested in observing the aspect of the two faces.
"The little boy resembles you, I think," I said.
The lame man struck his cane down hard upon the floor and laughed immoderately.
"If you knew what I had in my mind to say!" he exclaimed—"ah! that was well put, well put!—though but dubiously complimentary, but dubiously so, I assure you, either to father or son!"
The idea still continuing to tickle him, he laughed more gently, beating a sympathetic tattoo with his cane on the floor.
"To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here," he went on, at length, "this little—well, for present purposes, we will call him the Phenomenon. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused. This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band—" here Mr. Cradlebow raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa Keeler had said about Godfrey Cradlebow's "sprees"—"some of that beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace, and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children, I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother." Again, he lifted his hand to his eyes. "Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but amenable—there it is, amenable—but this lad"—Mr. Cradlebow paused again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined further expression.
"What is your name?" I inquired of the little boy, hopefully.
"Simmy B.," he answered revengefully in a tone of alarming hoarseness.
"Such colds as that boy has!" exclaimed the paternal Cradlebow. "They're like all the rest of him—they're phenomenal. There are times when that boy appears to be nothing but one frightful, perambulating cold! Well," he sighed, "and yet it's a strange fact, that the more depraved and miserable a little devil is, the more his mother'll coddle him.
"Now there's this one and my Lute—Luther Larkin—a good boy, but lacking all capacity for rest—always lacking the capacity for rest—uneasy, both of them—always uneasy! but how the mother would give her own rest for them, and seem to love them the better for it! strange! They have always been her idols, too. Well, I have captured Simeon and brought him in. I hope you may keep him. The rest you must learn for yourself. The Lord help me!" he groaned, as he picked up his cane, with evident physical pain, and hobbled cut of the room.
Within the school-room, things resumed their customary, Niagara-like roar, until a lamentable voice rose above the others, and was straightway followed by another voice in indignant explanation.
"Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!"
"Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at recess."
Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic features in vain for any trace of repentance.
There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling, sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation. Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and uplifted hands.
"Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil!"
"He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of protruding orbs.
"It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation—"It wa'n't but harf a one!"
"He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it t-t-t—and it slip-p-ped!"
"Wall, jest you keep your eyes peeled and your ears cocked," replied the sturdy Simeon, in hoarse and jarring accents; "and see if I don't take it out of my nose, yet."
The signs of that painful struggle slowly faded out of Simeon's face and there was an unusual calm in the school-room.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour elapsed. I was thoughtfully engaged in hearing one of my classes when startled by the sound of a window closed with a sharp bang. At the same time arose the universal voice:
"Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder! Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder!"
I looked out across the snowless fields, and there having already scaled two fences and put many a good rod between himself and the scene of his brief imprisonment, I beheld, borne as on the wings of the wind, the form of the retreating Simeon.
An incident at the close of my first week in Wallencamp was the visit of the "Turkey Mogul." Such was the name given by the Wallencampers to Mr. Baxter, the superintendent of schools.
Mr. Baxter lived many miles away in Farmouth, and was, properly, the visitor of the schools in Farmouth County. Wallencamp was not in Farmouth County. Nevertheless, Mr. Baxter had charge of the Wallencamp school. I had been informed that he drove over at the beginning and close of each term, put the scholars through the most "dreadful examins," and gave an indiscriminate "blowin' up" to persons and things in the place. So I looked forward to his coming with a curiosity not unmingled with more doubtful emotions.
It was Friday, and so near the close of the afternoon session that I had quite dismissed from my mind the contemplation of any dread advent for that day. It was just at that trying hour of Friday afternoon when only the spelling-classes remained to be heard, and teacher and scholars both were conscious, the one with a deep inward sense of relief, the others with many restless demonstrations of impatience, that the week was near its close; and that "to-morrow" would be Saturday and a holiday.
Estella the raven-haired—familiarly known as the "Modoc," a long and ungainly creature, with arms and legs so seemingly profuse and unmanageable, that they reminded one of the tentacles of a cuttle-fish—Estella was "passing around the water."
She was performing this accustomed office with a grin of such supreme delight and satisfaction as seemed actually to illuminate the back of her head, when the door of the school-room opened, and there, without any previous warning, appeared a grim, fierce-looking little man, whom I knew at once to be the "Turkey Mogul."
The extreme exigency of the case inspired me with a certain calmness of despair. Having advanced to meet this august personage, conducted him to the desk, and placed for him the official chair, which he shortly refused, I lifted my eyes, "prepared for any fate," to observe what might be the condition of my turbulent flock, and lo—all the tops, and Jews-harps, and apples, and whirligigs, and miniature buzz-saws had disappeared, and there was an array of pallid faces bent over another array of books—many of the latter were upside down, but the effect was unbroken. Even Estella, moved by some sudden divine sense of the fitness of things, had ceased her desultory wanderings about the room with the tin dipper, and, not having had time to procure a book, was working out imaginary problems on her fingers with the air of a Herschel, and I became slowly conscious that there was such a stillness in that room as had not been—no, nor anything like unto it,—since the first time I entered there.
I think Mr. Baxter must have observed something of the look of helpless astonishment which transfixed my features. I certainly saw the shadow of a smile lurking in his steel-gray eyes.
"Yes," he snarled, addressing the school; "yes, if I didn't know you, now, and if your books were not, most of 'em, bottom side up, and if I shouldn't be compelled in two minutes to prove the contrary, I might possibly imagine that you were studying—yes—humph!"
I said to Mr. Baxter, as cheerfully as possible, that "we were nearly through with our usual routine of classes for the day, but I should be happy, of course, to repeat any of the recitations which he might care to hear."
"Would you?" said he, looking at me not unpleasantly. "Do you really ask me to believe that? um-m-m," he murmured, resuming his stern aspect. "Let me see—Geography—yes, Miss Hungerford, you may call the first class in Geography."
I did not accuse the Superintendent of Schools of malevolent intentions, but I could honestly have affirmed that of all the divisions and subdivisions of my empire the first class in Geography was the one least calculated to shine on an occasion like the present.
I groaned inwardly, and called them forth. Their forlorn and wilted appearance as they formed in line went to my heart. I was resolved to defend them at whatever cost.
"Now," said Mr. Baxter, planting himself firmly, with his legs rather far apart, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and staring steadily at the shivering group from under his awful brows; "what is Geography? To begin with. That's the first thing. What is Geography?"
For a moment there was no reply. I almost began to hope that there would be none. I felt that here "Silence was golden," and if maintained, all might be comparatively well; when, to my dismay, there was a sort of flank movement in the ranks and the ill-starred Estella raised her hand.
"Well," said Mr. Baxter, pointing his finger steadfastly at her as if to impart a vein of concentration to her palpably loose and floating appearance; "You! You ought to know. What is Geography, eh?"
Some fair wreck of an idea, formerly appropriated in this connection, floated through the brain of the "Mo-doc." She opened her mouth and in those loud and startling accents, for which she was ever distinguished, gave utterance to these memorable words:
"A—round! like a ball!"
Mr. Baxter glared fiercely at her for a moment, and then permitted his scorn to escape in a long, sarcastic hiss.
"Yes-s-s," said he; "yes-s-s! around like a ball! Do you find it much in your way, eh? Do you often give it such a kick as that, eh? Well, take your seats! take your seats!"
The Superintendent of Schools seemed disinclined to evoke any further catastrophes of this sort, but proceeded to discourse to me, aside, in a confidential growl, on the peculiar and erratic natures of the benighted Wallencampers.
"Their minds," he said, with a grim smile, "have no receptivity. They must originate, or they are naught. Parents and children—they are all the same. I am convinced that there is no scholarship to be established here. It has been tried and the attempt has failed a hundred times. It's not in the nature of things. Get on the good side of them, that's all. That has failed sometimes, but it is not among the impossible things. Get on the good side of them."
Finally, he turned to address the children. The "examins" had certainly not been severe, but the "blowin' up" was faithfully and liberally performed.
Never before had I felt so drawn to my poor, wondering, wolf-besieged flock, and in proportion to my tenderness for them waxed my indignation toward the "Turkey Mogul."
"You can't learn," said he. "That's a sufficiently established fact, but if you don't behave, your teacher is going to write to me, mind! and I shall come down here in my buggy, and take you right up and off to Farmouth where we have a place to keep all such naughty boys and girls."
This last was evoked as a benediction. Mr. Baxter looked at his watch, and remarked that it was a long drive to Farmouth, and he must be going. "Dismiss your school, Miss Hungerford," he said.
Now the children were accustomed—it was a special privilege they had requested—to sing, before the school closed at night, one of the hymns with which they were all so familiar in Wallencamp.
I would have dismissed them, on this occasion, without further ceremony, but before I had time to tap my ruler on the desk as a signal for dismissal, they all struck up as with one voice:—
"What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our griefs and woes to share!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer."
At first I was a little amused at the incongruity of the thing. Then it began to seem to me inexpressibly touching.
The Superintendent of Schools stood with a cold, supercilious grin on his face, a stern, self-sufficient man, not one likely to echo the spirit of these simple words.
I stood beside him, weary and perplexed enough, but ever taking counsel of the pride of my own heart. And those poor children, with their hard, toilsome, barren lives before them, how they sang! their clear, young voices ringing out fearlessly, carelessly—they knew the words. I wondered if any one in the room appreciated the song as having inner truth and meaning.
As I was locking my desk, before leaving the room, I discovered this little note, which Rebecca had dropped in it.
"dere teecher,
"I wanted to do sumthyng to help yu wen I seen him come in To Day fur I new jus howe yu felt but thay wasent no wours than thay always was, and he nose it! and thay studdid more fur yu I think than thay did for any but I think it mus be harrd for yu not bein' use to us. I think yu was tired. When we was singin' I thot howe tired yu was, but thar' was always won to help. Excus writin' pleas but I wanted to let yu no for yu was good to me and I luv yu.
Becky Weir."
Somehow, the little note rested and comforted me, more than I would have imagined, a week before, any expression of this humble disciple of mine could have done.
I held the letter crumpled in my hand going up the lane. Going up the lane, too, I met Emily's fisherman coming gayly home from the river.
Mr. Rollin stopped, and gallantly requested the pleasure of carrying a small book which I held in my hand. He walked back to the Ark with me, talking very fluently the while.
"Do you know," he began; "I think I'm awfully fortunate meeting you here in the lane. I've been wishing for an opportunity to speak with you for two or three days past, but the Ark is such a popular resort for the youth of Wallencamp, and the children seem to be always following you. Well, they regard the school teacher as their special property, and would Consider me worse than an intruder if I should go in to take even the lowest seat in the synagogue. I've been wanting to speak with you ever since that first night—when I stared at you so stupidly at Captain Keeler's—when I went up to borrow the oars, and you were engaged, you remember," said Mr. Rollin, laughing gently, "in wresting particles of hulled corn from the ocean depths of that kettle."
"I remember," I said, trying to smother what annoyance I still felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante in me.
"The hulled corn? Oh! yes, indeed!" he answered with a sprightly air. "We have it served in the same way at Emily's, and we think it's just—a—rich, you know. But I wanted to tell you. If you could have known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming, so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in the Three Fates', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go up to scoff, but I remained to pray."
My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased.
"Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste. "Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the literal glasses!"
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean that—just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face—"if I had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see anything out of 'em or not!"
"You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was a different person now, in a different sphere of action.
Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the Wallencamp school—a doubtful position to his mind.
He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to cheek.
Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat baffling to the stern designs of justice.
"Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've had the impudence—well, if either one of us two is going to be taken in, Miss Hungerford, I can tell you it's a blamed sight more likely to be me; but you're prejudiced against me, I can see. You were prejudiced against me that first night. I know how those old women talk. They've got an idea, somehow, that I'm a scapegrace, and a desperate character. And, on my word, Miss Hungerford, I'm considered a real model chap there at home, and make speeches to the little boys and girls in Sunday School, and all that sort of thing. On my word, I do."
Mr. Rollin spoke quite warmly. I could not help laughing at his droll self-vindication.
"I should like to ask you to speak to my little boys and girls!" I said; "but it's too harrowing to the feelings. I listened to one address this afternoon."
"The 'Turkey Mogul?' Oh, that isn't my style!" said Mr. Rollin. "I don't sear their young vision with the prospect of eternal flames. I entice them with the blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall serve as an antidote—a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of censorious criticism."
Thus the voluble fisherman ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather mal à propos, it might be that I ought to consider him providentially included in my field of labor, and as one of the objects of my regenerating care.
Whether Mr. Rollin detected anything of this philanthropic intention I do not know. When we got to the gate he said:—
"Will you go with me for a drive to-morrow, Miss Hungerford? You know what the Wallencamp equipages are. They furnish entertainment, at all events. The drive to West Wallen is really beautiful—even at this season of the year, with such uncommonly fine weather, and you have a holiday, and the mail hasn't been brought from West Wallen for nearly a week."
I thanked the fisherman almost eagerly, thinking, at that instant, of the longed-for letters that I knew were waiting for me in the West Wallen Post Office.
Then, suddenly, I felt Rebecca's little note grow heavy in my hand.
To act voluntarily for others—to consider as serious any obstacles in the way of following out my personal inclinations—these were experiences too new to me, and my resolve was not a natural one, but forced and impatient.
"You are very kind," I said; "but I can't go to-morrow."
The two little Keelers came running out of the Ark to meet me. I was secretly relieved. Mr. Rollin had been watching me narrowly; his lips curled, and his eyes flashed with a half angry, half scornful light. He cast an unloving glance at the little Keelers.
"I can't, of course, question the justice of your decision," he said shortly, and touched his hat and walked away without another word.
I considered this as one of the least among my many trials and perplexities. Oftentimes I sighed for the light-hearted, "irresponsible" days of yore, when "missions" were, as yet, to me unknown.
School was the greatest perplexity. Grandma Keeler's tenderness grew more impressive each day.
"It seems to me you're a growin' bleak and holler-eyed, teacher," she would say to me when I came home at night.
So I indulged more and more in a deeply sentimental self-pity, and felt a growing satisfaction in the consciousness that I was enduring martyrdom. It was more by reason of a stubborn and desperate pride, I think, than from higher motives, that, in my letters home, I said nothing of the discomforts and discouragements which attended my course. I chose to dilate on the beautiful scenery of Wallencamp, and the quaint originality of its inhabitants.