|EARLY on Monday morning an old man driving a gray mare in a two-wheeled
cart came slowly up the road to the schoolhouse. A lank colt followed
the mare. The cart was very old, no vestige of paint remained on it,
one of the shafts was wrapped with wire, the bottom of the cart, made of
small slats, was loose. The man was heavy and the cart creaked. He drove
slowly, his big body filling the seat on which for comfort he had placed
a folded bedquilt.
He stopped in the road below the schoolhouse and got slowly out of the
creaking cart.
One of his legs was swollen with scrofula, and stiff to the knee. He
moved it with difficulty. He left the mare standing in the road, the
colt beside her, and came through the grove to the school-house door.
The stiff leg gave his heavy body an awkward swing. He supported himself
with a stout stick.
When he came finally to the school-house, he sat down on the step before
the door. He had evidently moved faster than he was accustomed to do,
and he remained for a moment breathing heavily, his big bulk covering
the step. Then he got a memorandum hook and a pencil out of his pocket.
The memorandum book was one of those cheap advertisements of patent
medicine which are given away at the country store. It contained a few
pages blank on one side and printed with virtues of the medicine on the
other. The pencil was a little more pretentious than the ordinary one.
It consisted of a tin case containing a long, thin core of purple lead,
the end of which could be made to protrude for writing by pressing the
thumb on the opposite end of the case.
The old man turned the leaves of the memorandum book, wetting his
forefinger in his mouth, until he found a blank page. Then he laid the
book on his knee, pressed the case of the pencil, touched the tip of the
lead to his tongue, and laboriously wrote.
“This schoolhouse is closed, by order of P. Hamrick, Trustee.”
He tore the leaf out, rose and pinned it to the door.
It was some distance through the grove of ancient trees to the road,
and he started to return. In spite of his bulk and his stiff leg he
endeavored to hurry. He thrust his stout stick out before him on the
path, and swung forward, his weight forcing the point of the stick into
the earth. In order that he might not fall, and to find each time a safe
place for the stick, he moved with his eyes on the ground.
Presently the end of the stick slipped on a pebble, and he lurched
forward. He saved himself from falling by grasping the crook, of the
stick with both hands, tottered a moment, then he regained his balance
and looked up.
The School-teacher stood before him.
The old man remained holding to the stick, breathing with difficulty.
The School-teacher was some distance away, motionless in the path. He
had evidently seen the man coming from the schoolhouse door, and had
stopped there in the path to observe him.
The School-teacher spoke.
“Have you been to the schoolhouse?” he said.
“Yes,” replied the man, “I've--I've been out to the schoolhouse.”
“To see me?” said the School-teacher. “Well, no,” replied the man, “not
exactly to see you.”
“To see the school?”
“Well, no, not exactly to see the school.” Then he added, “I'm the
trustee. I've been looking over the schoolhouse. I think I'll be goin'
on.”
“Why do you hurry?” said the Schoolteacher.
“I must be gettin' home,” said the old man.
He reached forward with his stick, but again the point of it slipped and
he nearly fell.
The School-teacher looked past the man toward the schoolhouse.
“What is that on the door?” he said. The old man turned around. The leaf
from the memorandum book, fastened with the pin, fluttered on the door,
as though 't were a living thing struggling to free itself.
“That's a piece of paper,” said the old man.
“Who put it there?”
“I did.”
“What for?”
“It's a kind of notice.”
“A notice to me?”
“A notice about the schoolhouse.”
“Is there anything wrong with the schoolhouse?”
“Well,” said the old man, “I don't think it's just exactly safe.”
“Not safe for the children?”
“Well, no, it mightn't he safe for the children.”
“What is wrong with the schoolhouse?” said the School-teacher.
The old man began to talk. “Well,” he said, “it's got a good roof.
Old Dix put that roof on. Every one of the clapboards is planed with
a drawin' knife. An' the weatherboardin' is good. It was seasoned
weatherboardin'. But the floor might be bad.”
“I have mended the floor,” replied the School-teacher.
“It ain't so much the floor,” continued the old man. “It's the sills.
The sills might be rotten.”
“I have examined the sills,” replied the School-teacher. “The sills are
sound.”
“Well,” said the old man, “failin' weather's comin' on. I think the
school had better stop anyway.”
He turned a little and put his stick out on the path into the leaves as
though he would go down the hill a shorter way to the road.
The School-teacher read his intent in the moving of the cane.
“You would better stay in the path,” he said. “If you get out of the
path you will fall.”
The old man turned back into the path before the School-teacher.
There was come now a certain dogged expression into his face.
“If you want to know,” he said, “there's been some complaint about you.”
“Who has complained of me?” said the School-teacher.
“Good men have complained.”
“What good men?”
“Why, men as good as the minister. Why, men as good as the doctor.”
Then he looked out sharp at the Schoolteacher.
“Ain't that hussy, Yaller Mag, up there with you at Nicholas Parks'
house?” The School-teacher regarded the old man standing before him.
“Do you think this woman ought to be sent away?”
“Yes, I do,” replied the old man.
“Then some one ought to tell her to go.”
“Yes, they ought.”
“It's a difficult thing to do,” said the School-teacher.
“To find some one to tell her?”
“Yes,” said the School-teacher, “that is it, to find some one to tell
her.”
“If that's all,” said the old man, “I'm goin' home by Nicholas Park's
house, that's my shortest way. I'll stop an' tell her myself.”
“But have you thought how difficult it will be to tell her?” inquired
the Schoolteacher.
“What's the trouble about tellin' her?”
“Well,” replied the School-teacher, his eyes resting on the old man's
swollen scrofuletic leg, “the trouble is that the one who goes to tell
her ought to be better than she is. He ought, himself, to have lived a
clean life.... Perhaps you have, perhaps you can tell her.”
The old man thought that the Schoolteacher saw something lying on the
ground, for he stooped over and his finger moved in the dust of the
path. And while he remained thus, the old man hurried along to the road.
The mare stood facing in the direction of the way over the mountain by
Nicholas Parks' house.
The old man took her by the bridle and turned her around in the road.
Then he climbed slowly into the creaking cart. He looked back when he
had got his big bulk on the folded bedquilt. The School-teacher was
standing upright where he had passed him in the path. The old man put
his hand on the corner of the seat and turned heavily about.
“There's another thing,” he said. “I'd like to know why you're always
carryin' that bastard brat around with you.”
Then he drove away, but not on the road that crossed the mountain by
Nicholas Park's house.