'Ah, if only we could be sure that unceasing regret consoles the dead!' she said, with an emotion, that softened and dimmed all her beauty. Then, as if ashamed or repentant of having shown her feeling for Bela to a stranger, she turned to him and said more distantly:
'Would it entertain you to see my little scholars? I will take you to the schoolhouses if you like.'
He could only eagerly accept the offer: he felt his heart beat and his eyes lighten as she spoke. He knew that such a condescension in her was a mark of friendship, a sign of familiar intimacy.
'It is but a mile or so through the woods. We will walk there,' she said, as she took her tall cane from its rack and called to Neva and Donau, where they lay on the terrace without.
He fancied that the vague mistrust of him, the vague prejudice against him of which he had been sensible in her, were passing away from her mind; but still he doubted—doubted bitterly—whether she would ever give him any other thought than that due to a passing and indifferent acquaintance. That she admired his intelligence and that she pitied his loneliness he saw; but there seemed to him that never, never, never, would he break down in his own favour that impalpable but impassable barrier due, half to her pride, half to her reserve, and absolutely to her indifference, which separated Wanda von Szalras from the rest of mankind.
If she had any weakness or foible it was the children's schools on the estates in the High Tauern and elsewhere. They had been founded on a scheme of Bela's and her own, when they had been very young, and the world to them a lovely day without end. Their too elaborate theories had been of necessity curtailed, but the schools had been established on the basis of their early dreams, and were unlike any others that existed. She had read much and deeply, and had thought out all she had read, and as she enjoyed that happy power of realising and embodying her own theories which most theorists are denied, she had founded the schools of the High Tauern in absolute opposition to all that the school-boards of her generation have decreed as desirable. And in every one of her villages she had her schools on this principle, and they throve, and the children with them. Many of these could not read a printed page, but all of them could read the shepherd's weather-glass in sky and flower; all of them knew the worm that was harmful to the crops, the beetle that was harmless in the grass; all knew a tree by a leaf, a bird by a feather, an insect by a grub.
Modern teaching makes a multitude of gabblers. She did not think it necessary for the little goatherds, and dairymaids, and foresters, and charcoal-burners, and sennerinn, and carpenters, and cobblers, to study the exact sciences or draw casts from the antique. She was of opinion, with Pope, that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,' and that a smattering of it will easily make a man morose and discontented, whilst it takes a very deep and even lifelong devotion to it to teach a man content with his lot. Genius, she thought, is too rare a thing to make it necessary to construct village schools for it, and whenever or wherever it comes upon earth it will surely be its own master.
She did not believe in culture for little peasants who have to work for their daily bread at the plough-tail or with the reaping-hook. She knew that a mere glimpse of a Canaan of art and learning is cruelty to those who never can enter into and never even can have leisure to merely gaze on it. She thought that a vast amount of useful knowledge is consigned to oblivion whilst children are taught to waste their time in picking up the crumbs of a great indigestible loaf of artificial learning. She had her scholars taught their 'ABC,' and that was all. Those who wished to write were taught, but writing was not enforced. What they were made to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day from those 'poor men's watches,' the opening flowers. In all countries there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door lore that is fast being choked out of existence under books and globes, and which, unless it passes by word of mouth from generation to generation, is quickly and irrevocably lost. All this lore she had cherished by her schoolchildren. Her boys were taught in addition any useful trade they liked—boot-making, crampon-making, horse-shoeing, wheel-making, or carpentry. This trade was made a pastime to each. The little maidens learned to sew, to cook, to spin, to card, to keep fowls and sheep and cattle in good health, and to know all poisonous plants and berries by sight.
'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy as he.'
She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all their sacks the night of Santa Claus—even those of the naughty children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought it cruel to give it any disappointments.