was part of his nature, impelled him to answer politely. Striving to
ignore the violent pantomime being enacted by Dan in the porch, he gave
the man the key to the situation. His big finger ran awkwardly down
the page as he gave the name by which each pupil was known. The
stranger listened in some amusement and not a little bewilderment to
the list: Roarin' Sandy's Donald, Crooked Duncan's Donald, Peter Archie
Red's Donald. They were rather unwieldy, but he planted them down
heroically, and then proceeded to disentangle the Murphys and the
Tuckers after the same fashion.
"I am very much obliged to you," he said with the same quiet
seriousness when the work was finished, and Scotty took his seat
wondering if the new master ever smiled. Most likely that grave,
unbending manner was just the natural outcome of his inevitably
stuck-up nature, he reflected.
Affairs went harmoniously enough until school was dismissed for the
noon recess. As soon as the word was given dinner-pails were seized,
bread-and-butter, meat, pie, and cake began to appear and disappear
again with equal rapidity; a crowd of the bigger girls made
preparations for brewing tea on the stove; and before the new master
could get on his overcoat and gloves preparatory to leaving, dinner was
well under way, and the room was filled with a strong aroma of tea and
pork.
Scotty had gone to the door to administer a farewell snowball to the
unclassified aliens who went home to the village for dinner. A prompt
answer came hurtling back, and as he dodged into the porch with a
derisive yell of laughter, he barely escaped knocking over the new
master. He hastily stepped aside to let him pass, but the man paused.
"I forgot to ask you your own name, among all the others," he said,
more for the sake of engaging the youth in conversation than to gain
information. "You are a MacDonald, too, I believe?"
Scotty had long passed the time when he felt his English name a
disgrace. Of course he would have preferred one of another sort, but
he scarcely thought of it now, and most of his schoolmates had
forgotten that he possessed one. And, in the face of this grave man's
courtesy, he felt it would be childish to pretend, so he answered, not
without some dignity, "No, my name will not be MacDonald, it will be
Stanwell, Ralph Stanwell."
The new master's grey eyes grew suddenly narrow; he was well acquainted
with all the small tricks to be played upon a newcomer, and had many a
time seen this one of a fictitious name successfully practiced. He had
been prepared to find this boy hard to manage, but he was disgusted
that he should descend to such a small, childish prank. He knew
Scotty's name only too well, and, in any case, for a youth with a
marked Highland accent, dressed in the grey homespun which seemed the
uniform of the clan MacDonald, to stand before him and give himself
such a name as this was as stupid as it was insulting.
"That is a very clumsy lie," he remarked quietly.
Scotty dropped his snowball and stared; for a moment he did not quite
comprehend.
"What?" he cried artlessly. His look of innocent amazement doubled his
listener's indignation.
"I said," returned the man very distinctly, "that you have told me a
lie, and a very stupid one, for I know your name to be Scot MacDonald,
and a rather notorious one you have made it, too."
And turning his back in disgust, the new master walked quietly down the
snowy road. For an instant Scotty stood glaring after him, every drop
of his rebellious blood tingling. He snatched up his snowball again
and took aim. If he could only smash that conceited looking hat, or
better still, the insufferable white collar! But there was something
in the commanding air of the figure that went so steadily onward, not
deigning to look back, that held the boy's arm.
Instead, he sent the missile crashing into the last remaining pane in
the porch window, and went leaping into the school, determined to find
Dan and relieve his feelings by working some irreparable damage.
The schoolhouse was in a condition to invite depredations. Late in the
previous autumn, as soon as the news of the new master's expected
advent had come, the matrons of Number Nine had organised a
housecleaning campaign in the school. Store Thompson's wife, that
queen of housekeepers, headed the expedition against dirt, and even the
minister's wife took part. The former lady had long declared that the
condition of the schoolhouse was clean ridic'l'us, and now demanded
that something be done to better it, for as the new master was coming
from the Captain's he was sure to be a gentleman, and most like would
be terrible tidy.
So the army of housekeepers had charged down upon the schoolhouse, and
such a washing and cleansing and renovating as took place had certainly
never been paralleled except when the spring winds and waters came
swirling down the Oro hills. The poor little building was scarcely
recognisable when it emerged from its baptism of soapy water and
whitewash. The big girls added an artistic touch by decorating the
spotless walls with cedar boughs, until the place smelled as sweet as
the swamps of the Oro; and to crown all, the minister presented it with
a fine picture of Queen Victoria to be hung above the master's desk.
And this was the immaculate condition of the place where, when his
dinner was finished, Scotty's roving eye sought something upon which to
work off his burning indignation.
It had always been the custom heretofore in Number Nine to employ the
noon recess tearing round the room in a cloud of dust, yelling,
throwing ink and breaking furniture. But to-day the awe of the new
master had had a restraining influence, and most of the wilder spirits
had betaken themselves to an outdoor campaign. So there were only a
few of the smaller pupils and the larger girls grouped round the stove
when Scotty started his new enterprise. The cedar wreath above the
door was quite dry and rather dusty and offered a fine field for a
unique exploit. Lighting a splinter at the stove, he set fire to the
garland, allowed the flames to mount up, and just as they threatened to
get beyond his control, beat them out with his cap. The girls shrieked
in horror; Betty Lauchie screamed that he was a wretch, and the
minister himself would be after him, and Biddy Murphy vowed she'd pull
every hair of his worthless head out for him if he tried it again. But
Scotty was joyously reckless and quite beyond fear of even Miss Murphy.
When Dan returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, who lived over
on the Tenth, he found his chum the centre of a wildly excited group,
and engaged in beating out his third conflagration. Dan was
immediately fired to emulation. He would be disgraced forever in the
eyes of the Flats if he allowed Scotty to get ahead of him, and already
the room was filling with admiring MacDonalds and envious Murphys. So,
in spite of the imploring shrieks and commands of the girls, he struck
a match and soon had the festoons along the wall crackling merrily.
When this rival blaze was extinguished Hash Tucker stepped into public
notice. Considering his blood and breeding, this son of the house of
Tucker should have been a phlegmatic Saxon. But no one can say what
Canadian air will do with the blood; and under its influence Hash had
long ago commenced a reversion to type, the aboriginal wild Indian.
Whatever Scotty or Dan did therefore, that he could outdo. Seizing a
burning brand from the stove, he scrambled up on the teacher's rickety
old desk, and the next moment the triumphal arch, reared in honour of
the new master's coming, was in a blaze. But just as he reached up to
beat out the flames he was gripped violently round the knees, and down
he came to the floor, Scotty on the top of him. Hash roared lustily
for his followers; the Tenth responded gallantly, Scotty was engulfed
in their on-rush, and, to help on the good work, Dan Murphy headed a
rescue party from the Oa to extricate his friend from the yelling heap.
What the outcome of this affray might have been is doubtful, but just
at its inception a terrified cry of "fire," from the remainder of the
school parted the combatants. They came to their feet to find the
flames leaping up the walls, and clouds of smoke rolling through the
room.
It was no joke this time and the boys wasted not an instant. Scotty
leaped from the floor to head an impromptu fire brigade, and for a few
moments they worked desperately. They dragged down the burning
branches and flung them out of doors; they flew to and from the pump,
they flung snow and water among the flames, and after a short but
desperate struggle the fire was conquered.
It was all over in a few moments, and the victors stood, begrimed and
breathless, and rather ruefully surveyed the havoc they had unwittingly
wrought. The lately spotless walls were scorched and blackened, the
decorations depended from the fastenings, charred and ugly, and the
floor was swimming in inky water.
"Horo!" cried Scotty, with a long, dismayed whistle.
"It'll be bad for the gent's white collar if he comes in here," said
Dan solemnly. "Murderin' blazes, who's that?"
Now, it happened that by an evil chance Gabby Johnny, the
Secretary-Treasurer, had been driving past the school on his way to the
woods, and seeing smoke issuing from the windows of the building over
which he considered himself the especial guardian, he stopped his team
and rushed upon the scene, and there he stood now, in the silent crowd
of frightened girls and sobered boys, gazing at the devastation with
such an expression of aghast horror, that at the sight of him all
Scotty's compunction vanished and he laughed aloud.
Gabby Johnny peered through the smoke and discerned his enemy,
evidently rejoicing over his evil work.
"Ah, ye ill piece!" he shouted, stepping up to the boy and shaking his
fist in his face, "Ah kenned it was you! Aye, Ah kenned! If there's
ony scandal'us goin's on ye'll be in it! It's an evil end ye're comin'
til, wi' yer goin's on; aye, that's what ye are! Ye neither fear God,
nor regard man! Sik a like onceevilised----"
Now Gabby Johnny was prepared upon all occasions to prove his right to
his sobriquet, and Dan Murphy well knew he would not stop until he had
driven Scotty to extreme measures, so here he mercifully interfered in
his friend's behalf. He had no mind to defy a trustee, so, being of a
diplomatic turn, determined to divert the tide of wrath by the simple
expedient of producing a counter-irritant. He slipped out quietly from
the line of culprits, and snatching up a well-packed snowball hurled it
straight and true at the team standing in the road. The missile was a
hard one, and the nervous young colts, their heads erect, their
nostrils indignant, went jingling off down the road, their heels
sending a fine snowstorm over the old bobsleigh, leaping in their wake.
Gabby Johnny heard his bells and his eloquence suddenly ceased. At the
same instant Dan burst in upon him, his eyes starting from his head,
his breath coming in gasps.
"Sure, your team's runnin' away!" he bawled. "They're runnin' away! I
can't stop them; they're gone clane wild!"
Gabby Johnny waited neither to hear nor deliver more. He darted out
and down the road, followed by a hailstorm of snowballs and the joyful
cheers of Number Nine. And as he went he howled breathless anathemas,
alternately at his wayward horses and back at the yelling mob behind
him, both couched in language little calculated to raise the moral
status of the already besmirched school.
But the boys' trouble was not over; they returned from the rout of the
trustee only to find the new master entering the scene of destruction.
He stood and looked about him with a manner just as quiet, but no
graver, than usual.
"How did the fire start?" he asked calmly.
The dauntless three stepped forward, headed by Scotty. In the old days
confession to McAllister did not appear in the code of schoolboy
honour; but there was something about this man, even though Scotty
cordially hated him, which demanded fair dealing. The new master
looked them over in a manner that was hardly complimentary. His
eyebrows rose.
"Children!" was all he said, but the word made Scotty writhe. Then he
did not scold or rave as the boys half-wished he would. He quietly
dismissed all but the three culprits, and saying he would give them
that afternoon and the next day to bring the school back to the
condition in which they had found it, and that done, he would prefer
that they remain at home under their parents' control for a month or
so, he turned on his heel and walked away with an air that said plainly
that this was no affair of his and was regarded by him with calm
indifference.
The boys were completely taken aback. Hitherto school discipline had
consisted exclusively of thrashings, which though uncomfortable had
some honour attached. But here was a new departure; to have to undo
all one's mischief, and then be contemptuously dismissed was a serious
affair. The new master acted as though he were the King of England
too, and certainly, with Gabby Johnny at his back, he was not to be
trifled with.
When the three arrived the next morning, armed with whitewash and
brushes, Dan and Hash were rather inclined to feel subdued, but not so
Scotty. In his home discipline was not so rigid as in that of the
other two, and his grandparents had not even heard of his escapade.
And his heart was still raging hot against the new master. The man had
dared to tell him he lied! The remembrance of it and Monteith's air of
calm superiority maddened him. How he longed to knock him down and
hear him take back his statement. Well, he could not do that, it
seemed, but he would wreak his vengeance in some other way.
So with Scotty in this mood the work of reparation did not go on very
steadily. His two companions tried to attend to business, but soon
found it impossible. They were alone in the forest with unlimited
whitewash; and with Scotty inciting them to deeds of daring, how could
they resist? They started by enduring their leader's pranks, and ended
by embracing them, and when their morning's task was completed not even
McAllister's ghost, could it have appeared, would have recognised its
old haunts.
Yet no one could say the boys had not done their work, for they had
whitewashed the school with a thoroughness even Store Thompson's wife
would never have attempted. The only fault was the lack of
discrimination shown by the decorators. Some critics might have
considered the coating of the floor and the desks a work of
supererogation. But the boys were not stingy; they whitewashed
everything with an impartial and lavish generosity; the walls, the
ceiling, the blackboard, the furniture. Yes, even the stove and
stovepipes were rubbed until they fairly radiated whiteness, and stood
out spectrally in their pallid surroundings, like the ghost of some
departed heater. Scotty gave the new master's desk an extra coat, and
even polished up a stray book and dinner pail, unluckily left behind
the day before, just to have them in harmony with their environment.
When at last the work was finished and the three bespattered workmen
prepared to depart, Dan declared in an oratorical address delivered
from the top of the master's snowy desk, that they had nobly done their
duty, for had they not carried out the new master's instructions and
whitewashed the school?
And when they turned the white key in the white door and stole off in
three directions through the forest, bursting with mirth, they vowed
they had not experienced such a season of pure joy since the night
Gabby Johnny's waggon had arisen, like Charles's Wain, in the heavens!
X
IN THE REALMS OF GOLD
Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,
What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live and win the final praise.
--ABCHIBALD LAMPMAN.
Upon his return home, Scotty went out behind the house to work off some
of his superfluous mirth upon the woodpile. He had flung aside his
coat and was swinging his axe vigorously, when, with the quickness of
the rural eye which always spies an approaching figure, he noticed a
man turn in from the highway and walk briskly up the snowy lane. The
boy gave a low whistle; his face grew dark with anger. It was the new
master! He had found out the condition of the school then, and had
come to report to his grandparents. McAllister at his worst was better
than this fellow, for McAllister was no sneak. But even in his anger,
he chuckled mischievously when he considered what an exhibition
Monteith would surely make of himself if he attempted to lodge
complaints with Big Malcolm against his grandson.
But instead of turning up the path to the door, the new master followed
the track that led round the house under the Silver Maple.
At first Scotty was of a mind to dodge round the woodpile and escape;
but he was too late; Monteith had already caught sight of him; so he
waited, sullen and defiant.
The new master lost no time in making his errand known.
"I came to offer an apology, Ralph Stanwell," he said gravely, "for
what I said concerning your name. I found out my mistake only this
afternoon."
Scotty's defiant air changed to one of amazement; his eyes fell, he
felt suddenly ashamed.
"I hope you will accept an explanation, though it does not at all atone
for what I said," continued the schoolmaster earnestly. "I am truly
ashamed of myself for making such a stupid blunder."
Scotty squirmed in embarrassment. He had never in his life witnessed
any such dignified reparation of a wrong, and in contrast, his own late
conduct looked childish and almost barbarous.
"Oh, it will not matter, whatever," he stammered abruptly, and in a
manner much more ungracious than his feelings warranted.
"But it does matter very much. It was no way for one man to speak to
another."
Scotty experienced a glow of mingled pride and shame; the new master
considered him a man then, and he had not played the man's part! "But,
you see," continued Monteith, "I felt so sure. It was your Highland
accent, and your--your general MacDonald appearance that to my
ignorance made your statement unbelievable."
The schoolmaster had unwittingly struck the right chord.
Scotty smiled shyly but amicably. "Oh, it will be jist nothing," he
said generously.
"Won't you shake hands, then, and let me feel I am quite forgiven?"
But Scotty did not put out his hand; he stood shifting from one foot to
the other, looking down at the heap of chips.
"But--I--would you not be knowing?" he faltered.
"Knowing what?"
"That we--that I would be making the schoolhouse worse than ever?"
There was a sudden light in Monteith's eyes that would have surely
convinced Scotty, had he seen it, of the new master's ability to smile.
"Well, perhaps that will help to even things up a little," he said
brightly. "Come, are you willing to call it quits?"
Scotty put out his big hand swiftly, and felt it caught in a strong
bony grip. And as their hands met Monteith's stern face suddenly broke
out into an unexpected smile, a smile so brilliant and kindly that the
boy felt it illuminate his whole being, and from that moment he was the
new master's friend.
"And now," said the man, suddenly becoming grave again, "will you tell
me how you come to have two names? How does a Highland Scot like you
happen to have such a name as Stanwell?"
Scotty gasped; was he going to ignore the whitewashing altogether?
"It would be my father's," he answered simply, "but I would always be
living here with my grandfather, and I was always called MacDonald."
"Ralph Stanwell, Ralph Stanwell," repeated the schoolmaster
ruminatingly, "I've heard that name before. Why, yes; I wonder if you
are any relation to the Captain Ralph Stanwell I once met in Toronto.
The name is not common."
"My father died there, and my mother, too," was the answer.
The new master stared. "Surely, surely," he was saying, half to
himself, "it couldn't be possible; but his wife's name was MacDonald
too! And Herbert always said the child died!"
Under the man's steady gaze Scotty fidgeted with his axe in combined
amazement and embarrassment.
"Was your father's second name Everett?"
"Yes, and that will be mine, too."
The new master stared harder.
"Well, well, well," he muttered, "I wonder if he knows!"
The boy stood lost in a wild speculation. By some queer trick of
memory he was back once more in Store Thompson's shop, a little
curly-headed fellow, and felt a man's kind, playful hand upon his
curls; and at the sound of his name saw a smiling face grow suddenly
grave with amazement, fear and defiance chasing one another across it.
How was it that, all through his life, his English name seemed always
to produce consternation?
Monteith shook himself as though awakening from a dream.
"I beg your pardon," he said hastily, "your name called up some old
memories. And now, I must be going." He held out his hand again.
"Good-bye, and I thank you for your generosity."
"But--but you will not be leaving without your supper!" cried Scotty
aghast.
"Thank you, but your grandparents are not expecting me, and----"
Scotty stared. "But what difference would that be making?" he asked
artlessly. "It will be all the better." The new master smiled again
at the unconscious hospitality of the remark, and this time accepted
the invitation. Scotty instantly flung aside his axe, and led the way
around to the door.
Monteith had already learned to expect a warm greeting from the
inhabitants of the Oro Highlands, but he had yet to experience a true
Scottish-Canadian welcome, and was almost overwhelmed by the one he
received in the old house under the Silver Maple.
Big Malcolm met him at the door and made him welcome in a manner that
somehow made the guest feel that the old man owned the whole township
of Oro and was laying it at his feet. Mrs. MacDonald drew him up to
the fire, bewailing the long cold walk he had had, and pulling off his
overcoat, calling all the while for Scotty to run and put more wood in
the stove that she might make a fresh cup of tea. Hamish came hurrying
up from the barn to shake the guest's hand and make him welcome yet
again, and even Sport, Bruce's successor, leaped round him, barking
joyously, as though he understood that the arrival of a visitor was the
best possible thing that could happen.
Then, there was Old Farquhar, still cackling incoherent Gaelic from the
chimney corner. Before the visitor had got the snow swept from his
feet the old man inquired if he had read Ossian's poems, and finding
him in the depths of ignorance regarding that great bard, turned his
back upon him in disgust, and for the remainder of the afternoon snored
grumpily.
The hostess explained apologetically, as she brought the new master a
steaming cup of tea, that indeed poor Farquhar was the nice, kind body,
but he had had the toothache all last night and would be terrible set
on Ossian.
Mrs. MacDonald was growing too old for the household cares devolving
upon her, and Scotty being her chief help, the housekeeping did not at
all compare with what Monteith was accustomed to in his boarding place
at Store Thompson's. But he was conscious of no lack in the dingy old
house. He recognised the inherent refinement of Mrs. MacDonald's
nature, and bowed to it; he knew Big Malcolm for a gentleman the moment
he spoke; and he saw, too, something of the mystic in Hamish. For in
later years there had grown an expression in Hamish's kind brown eyes
which the schoolmaster understood--the look of a soul that has longed
to soar, but has been kept down by narrow limitations.