“Jimmy, listen to me. I have found out something, and all owing to that ridiculous dunce-cap. It is I who have been stupid. I never knew until now how much you wish to learn and to improve. You are not stupid, Jimmy. I am sure of it. You are slow, but you and I will put our heads together and make the best of that. Will you try with me, Jimmy?”
The curly head was raised again. His tear-stained eyes looked out at her shyly, but with a beam of astonished gratitude. From his quivering lips fell a low but resolute “Yes, ma’am!”
“We will begin to-day. We need each other, Jimmy.”
As a work of art grows slowly from confusion and lack of form to coherence and symmetry to the moral joy of its maker, so her experience in human plastic enterprise filled the heart of Miss Willis with a vital happiness. For two years—day in and day out—she never flagged in her task of giving sight to the eyes and ears to the mind of the unshaped clay which fate had put into her hands for making or marring. How patient she had to be! How ingenious, vigilant, and sympathetic! Through working upon the souls of Jimmy’s father and mother by pathetic appeal she obtained permission to keep him an hour after school each day and drill him step by step, inch by inch. She brought her midday meal and shared it with him. In the evening she framed cunning devices to lure his budding intelligence. And from the very first she beheld her figure of human ignorance respond to her gentle moulding. Jimmy’s soul was first of all a hot-spring of ambition; the evidences of which, when once recognized, were ever paramount. But how blocked and intricate were the passages through which this yearning for fame sought to express itself! Sometimes it seemed even to her as though she would never dissipate the fog-bank which tortured his intelligence. But Jimmy was patient, too, and his bull-dog features were but the reflex of a grim tenacity of purpose. At the end of the first year she reported that he was unfit to be promoted, in order that she need not lose him just when he needed her most. She was able to make clear to Jimmy that this was not a disgrace, but a sign of progress. But when the end of the second year came she passed him on with only the qualm of love parting with its own. Her task was done. The dull, clouded brow was clear with the light of eager reason; the still struggling faculties had begun to understand that in slowness there was the compensation of power, and were resolute with hope.
“Good-by, Miss Willis. I’m going to be at the head of my class next year; see if I’m not!”
So said Jimmy as he left her. She hesitated a moment, then stooped and kissed him. It made her blush, for she had never kissed a pupil before, nor any one but her mother since Sir Galahad. It made Jimmy blush, too, for he did not know exactly what to make of it. So they parted, and Jimmy went up the ladder of knowledge for two years more at that school. He was not the head of his class; he was number five the first year and number three the second. When he graduated he promised to write; but, boylike, he never did, so he vanished into the open polar world, and was lost to the eyes of the woman who had grown gray in his service.
Yes, Miss Willis had grown gray. That is, there were more or less becoming threads of silver in her maiden tresses, and the dignity of middle age had added inches to her waist and a few interesting lines to her forehead. There was no new Sir Galahad on the horizon even of her day-dreams, and her mother was in failing health. Mrs. Willis continued now to fail for five years—years which taxed her daughter’s strength, though not her affection. Pupils came and went—pupils to whom she gave herself with the faithfulness of her New England conscience—but no one exactly like Jimmy. He remained unique, yet lost in the maze of life. When her mother died she settled down as an incorrigible old maid, and her daydreams knew no more the vision of a love coming from the clouds to possess her. Nor did the years bring with them realization of that other vision—herself enthroned in the public mind as a wonderful educator to whom the world should bow. She was only Miss Marion Willis, the next to the oldest and the most respected teacher of the Glendale grammar-school. So she found herself at the end of twenty-five years of continuous service. It did occur to her as a delightful possibility that the authorities or scholars or somebody would observe this quarter-centennial anniversary in a suitable manner, and a vision danced before her mind’s eye of a surprise-party bearing a pretty piece of silver or a clock as a memorial of her life-work. But the date came and passed without comment from any source, and Marion’s sense of humor made the best of it by drinking her own health on the evening of the day in question, and congratulating herself that she loved her work and was happy. At that supper there was no guest save Jimmy’s tintype, which she fetched from the mantelpiece and leaned against the cake-basket on the table. Jimmy stood now not only for himself, but for a little army of struggling souls upon whom her patient intelligence had been freely lavished.
Of course, Jimmy was found. Miss Willis had always felt sure that he would be. But ten years more had slipped away before he was brought to light. One day she discovered his name in the newspaper as a rising political constellation, and she was convinced, without the least particle of evidence to support her credulity, that the James in question was her Jimmy. His name had suddenly become prominent in the political firmament on account of his resolute conduct as the mayor of a Western city. The public had been impressed by his strength and pluck and executive ability, working successfully against a gang of municipal cutthroats, and his name was being paraded over the country.
“I’ve half a mind to write to him and discover if it’s he,” Miss Willis said to herself. “How surprised he would be to receive a postal card ‘Are you my Jimmy?’” But somehow she refrained. She did not wish to run the risk of disappointment, though she was sure it was he. She preferred to wait and to watch him now that she had him under her eye again. This was an easy thing to do, for Jimmy the mayor became Jimmy the governor before two years had passed, and one morning Miss Willis found facing her in the Daily Dispatch a newspaper cut of large dimensions which set her heart beating as it had not throbbed since the days of Sir Galahad. It was a portrait of her Jimmy; Jimmy magnified and grown into a hirsute man, but the same old Jimmy with the tangled hair, serious brow, and large, pathetic eyes. Miss Willis laughed and Miss Willis cried, and presently, after she had time to realize the full meaning of what had happened, she had a vision of Jimmy in the White House, and herself, a venerable yet hale old woman, standing beside him in a famous company, and Jimmy was saying before them all, “I wish to make you acquainted with my dear teacher—the woman to whom I owe my start in life.” The idea tickled her imagination, and she said to herself that she would keep the secret until that happy day arrived. What a delightful secret it was, and how surprised he would be when she said to him, “I suppose you don’t recognize me, Jimmy?” Then, perhaps, he would embrace her before everybody, and the newspapers would have her picture and give the particulars of her life.