THE LITTLE SCHOOL-TEACHER
On a warm day in May, a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and
sets the bees humming, and the children longing for a chance to pull
off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook; on such a day the
door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a
long patch across the floor toward the "teacher's desk," and the
breeze came in and tossed a stray curl about her forehead, and the
children turned their heads often to look at the round clock on the
wall, watching for the slowly moving hands to point to the hour of
four.
It was a mixed school. Children of all ages were there, from naughty
little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of
seventeen and nineteen, who were in algebra and the sixth reader. It
was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne
lingered in the school this year all through May and June, instead of
leaving in April, as usual, to help his uncle on the farm. It was
"Teacher." He was in love with her, and always waited after school,
hoping for a chance to walk home with her.
Poor boy! Black haired, red cheeked, and big hearted, he knew his love
was hopeless, for he was younger than she--not so much; but there was
Tom Howard who was also in love with her, and he had a span of sorrel
horses which he had raised and broken himself, and they were his own,
and he could come at any time--when she would let him--and take her
out riding.
Ah, that was something to aspire to! Such a team as that, and
"Teacher" to sit by his side and drive out with him, all in her pretty
flat hat with a pink rose on it and green ribbons flying, and her
green parasol over her head--sitting so easily--just leaning forward a
bit and turning and laughing at what he was saying, and all the town
seeing her with him, and his harness shining and new, making the team
look as splendid as the best livery in town, and his buggy all painted
so bright and new--well! The time would come when he too would have
such an outfit. It would. And Teacher would see that Tom Howard was
not the only one who could drive up after her in such style.
Little Teacher was tired to-day. The children had been restless and
noisy, and her heart had been heavy with a great disappointment. She
had been carefully saving her small salary that she might go when
school closed and take a course at the "Art Institute" in "Technique."
For a long time she had clung to the idea that she would become an
illustrator, and a great man had told her father that "with a little
instruction in technique" his daughter had "a fortune at the tips of
her fingers." Only technique! Yes, if she could get it!
Father could help her, of course, only father was a painter in oils
and not an illustrator--and then--he was so driven, always, and father
and mother both thought it would be best for her to take the course of
study recommended by the great man. So it was decided, for there was
Martha married and settled in her home not far away from the
Institute, and Teacher could live with her and study. Ah, the
long-coveted chance almost within her reach! Then--one difficulty
after another intervened, beginning with a great fire in the fall
which swept away Martha's home and all they had accumulated, together
with her husband's school, rendering it necessary for the young couple
to go back to Leauvite for the winter.
"Never mind, Betty, dear," Martha had encouraged her. "We'll return in
the spring and start again, and you can take the course just the
same."
But now a general financial stringency prevailed all over the country.
"It always seems, when there's a 'financial stringency,' that
portraits and paintings are the things people economize on first of
all," said Betty.
"Naturally," said Mary Ballard. "When people need food and clothing--they
want them, and not pictures. We'll just have to wait, dear."
"Yes, we'll have to wait, Mary." Saucy Betty had a way of calling her
mother "Mary." "Your dress is shabby, and you need a new bonnet; I
noticed it in church,--you'd never speak of that, though. You'd wear
your winter's bonnet all summer."
Yes, Betty must see to it, even if it took every bit of the fund, that
mother and Janey were suitably dressed. "Never mind, Mary, I'll catch
up some day. You needn't look sorry. I'm all right about my own
clothes, for Martha gave me a rose for my hat, and the new ribbons
make it so pretty,--and my green parasol is as good as new for all
I've had it three years, and--"
Betty stopped abruptly. Three years!--was it so long since that
parasol was new--and she was so happy--and Richard came home--? The
family were seated on the piazza as they were wont to be in the
evening, and Betty walked quietly into the house, and up to her room.
Bertrand Ballard sighed, and his wife reached out and took his hand in
hers. "She's never been the same since," he said.
"Her character has deepened and she's fine and sweet--"
"Yes, yes. I have three hundred dollars owing me for the Delong
portrait. If I had it, she should have her course. I'll make another
effort to collect it."
"I would, Bertrand."
Julien Thurbyfil and his wife walked down the flower-bordered path
side by side to the gate and stood leaning over it in silence.
Practical Martha was the first to break it.
"There will be just as much need for preparatory schools now as there
was before the fire, Julien."
"Yes, dear, yes."
"And, meanwhile, we are glad of this sweet haven to come to, aren't
we? And it won't be long before things are so you can begin again."
"Yes, dear, and then we'll make it up to Betty, won't we?"
But Julien was distraught and somber, in spite of brave words. He had
not inherited Mary Ballard's way of looking at things, nor his
father-in-law's buoyancy.
All that night Betty lay wakeful and thinking--thinking as she had
many, many a time during the last three years, trying to make plans
whereby she might adjust her thoughts to a life of loneliness, as
she had decided in her romantic heart was all she would take. How
could there be anything else for her since that terrible night
when Richard had come to her and confessed his guilt--his love and
his renunciation! Was she not sharing it all with him wherever he
might be, and whatever he was doing? Oh, where was he? Did he ever
think of her and know she was always thinking of him? Did he know
she prayed for him, and was the thought a comfort to him? Surely
Peter was the happier of the two, for he was not a sorrowing
criminal, wandering the earth, hiding and repenting. So all her
thoughts went out to Richard, and no wonder she was a weary little
wight at the end of the school day.
Four o'clock, and the children went hurrying away, all but Hilton Le
Moyne, who lingered awhile at his desk, and then reluctantly departed,
seeing Teacher did not look up from her papers except to give him a
nod and a fugitive little smile of absent-minded courtesy. Left thus
alone, Betty lifted the lid of her desk and put away the school
register and the carefully marked papers to be given out the next day,
and took from a small portfolio a packet of closely written sheets.
These she untied and looked over, tossing them rapidly aside one after
another until she found the one for which she searched.
It was a short poem, hastily written with lead pencil, and much
crumpled and worn, as if it had been carried about. Now she
straightened the torn edges and smoothed it out and began scanning the
lines, counting off on her fingers the rhythmic beats; she copied the
verses carefully on a fresh white sheet of paper and laid them aside;
then, shoving the whole heap of written papers from her, she selected
another fresh sheet and began anew, writing and scanning and writing
again.
Steadily she worked while an hour slipped by. A great bumblebee flew
in at one window and boomed past her head and out at the other window,
and a bluebird perched for an instant on the window ledge and was off
again. She saw the bee and the bird and paused awhile, gazing with
dreamy eyes through the high, uncurtained window at drifting clouds
already taking on the tint of the declining sun; then she stretched
her arms across her wide desk, and putting her head down on them, was
soon fast asleep. Tired little Teacher!
The breeze freshened and tumbled her hair and fanned her flushed
cheek, and it did more than that; for, as the drifting clouds
betokened, the weather was changing, and now a gust of wind caught at
her papers and took some of them out of the window, tossing and
whirling them hither and thither. Some were carried along the wayside
and lost utterly. One fluttered high over the tree tops and out across
the meadow, and then suddenly ceased its flight and drifted slowly
down like a dried leaf, past the face of a young man who sat on a
stone, moodily gazing in the meadow brook. He reached out a long arm
and caught it as it fluttered by, just in time to save it from
annihilation in the water.
For a moment he held the scrap of paper absently between his fingers,
then glancing down at it he spied faintly written, half-obliterated
verses and read them; then, with awakened interest, he read them
again, smoothing the torn bit of paper out on his knee. The place
where he sat was well screened from the road by a huge basswood tree,
which spread great limbs quite across the stream, and swept both its
banks with drooping branches and broad leaves. Now he held the scrap
on his open palm and studied it closely and thoughtfully. It was the
worn piece from which Betty had copied the verses.
"Oh, send me a thought on the winds that blow.
On the wing of a bird send a thought to me;
For the way is so long that I may not know,
And there are no paths on the troubled sea.
"Out of the darkness I saw you go,--
Into the shadows where sorrows be,--
Wounded and bleeding, and sad and slow,--
Into the darkness away from me.
"Out of my life and into the night,
But never out of my heart, my own.
Into the darkness out of the light,
Bleeding and wounded, and walking alone."
Here the words were quite erased and scratched over, and the pathetic
bit of paper looked as if it had been tear-stained. Carefully and
smoothly he laid it in his long bill book. The book was large and
plethoric with bank notes, and there beside them lay the little scrap
of paper, worn and soiled, yet tear washed, and as the young man
touched it tenderly he smiled and thought that in it was a wealth of
something no bank note could buy. With a touch of sentiment
unsuspected by himself, he felt it too sacred a thing to be touched by
them, and he smoothed it again and laid it in a compartment by
itself.
Then he rose, and sauntered across the meadow to the country road, and
down it past the schoolhouse standing on its own small rise of ground
with the door still wide open, and its shadow, cast by the rays of the
now setting sun stretched long across the playground. The young man
passed it, paused, turned back, and entered. There at her desk Betty
still slept, and as he stepped softly forward and looked down on her
she stirred slightly and drew a long breath, but slept on.
For a moment his heart ceased to beat, then it throbbed suffocatingly
and his hand went to his breast and clutched the bill book where lay
the tender little poem. There at her elbow lay the copy she had so
carefully made. The air of the room was warm and drowsy, and the
stillness was only broken by the low buzzing of two great bluebottle
flies that struggled futilely against the high window panes. Dear
little tired Betty! Dreaming,--of whom? The breath came through her
parted lips, softly and evenly, and the last ray of the sun fell on
her flushed cheek and brought out the touch of gold in her hair.
The young man turned away and crossed the bare floor with light steps
and drew the door softly shut after him as he went out. No one might
look upon her as she slept, with less reverent eyes. Some distance
away, where the road began to ascend toward the river bluff, he seated
himself on a stone overlooking the little schoolhouse and the road
beyond. There he took up his lonely watch, until he saw Betty come out
and walk hurriedly toward the village, carrying a book and swinging
her hat by the long ribbon ties; then he went on climbing the winding
path to the top of the bluff overlooking the river.
Moodily he paced up and down along the edge of the bluff, and finally
followed a zigzag path to the great rocks below, that at this point
seemed to have hurled themselves down there to do battle with the
eager, dominating flood. For a while he stood gazing into the rushing
water, not as though he were fascinated by it, but rather as if he
were held to the spot by some inward vision. Presently he seemed to
wake with a start and looked back along the narrow, steep path, and up
to the overhanging edge of the bluff, scanning it closely.
"Yes, yes. There is the notch where it lay, and this may be the very
stone on which I am standing. What an easy thing to fall over there
and meet death halfway!" He muttered the words under his breath and
began slowly to climb the difficult ascent.
The sun was gone, and down by the water a cold, damp current of air
seemed to sweep around the curve of the bluff along with the rush of
the river. As he climbed he came to a warmer wave of air, and the dusk
closed softly around him, as if nature were casting a friendly curtain
over the drowsing earth; and the roar of the river came up to him, no
longer angrily, but in a ceaseless, subdued complaint.
Again he paced the top of the bluff, and at last seated himself with
his feet hanging over the edge, at the spot from which the stone had
fallen. The trees on this wind-swept place were mostly gnarled oaks,
old and strong and rugged, standing like a band of weather-beaten life
guardsmen overlooking the miles of country around. Not twenty paces
from where the young man sat, half reclining on his elbow, stood one
of these oaks, and close to its great trunk on its shadowed side a man
bent forward intently watching him. Whenever the young man shifted his
position restlessly, the figure made a darting movement forward as if
to snatch him from the dangerous brink, then recoiled and continued to
watch.
Soon the young man seemed to be aware of the presence and watchful
eye, and looked behind him, peering into the dusk. Then the man left
his place and came toward him, with slow, sauntering step.
"Hullo!" he said, with an insinuating, rising inflection and in the
soft voice of the Scandinavian.
"Hallo!" replied the young man.
"Seek?"
"Sick? No." The young man laughed slightly. "What are you doing
here?"
"Oh, I yust make it leetle valk up here."
"Same with me, and now I'll make it a little walk back to town." The
young man rose and stretched himself and turned his steps slowly back
along the winding path.
"Vell, I tank I make it leetle valk down town, too," and the figure
came sauntering along at the young man's side.
"Oh, you're going my way, are you? All right."
"Yas, I tank I going yust de sam your way."
The young man set the pace more rapidly, and for a time they walked on
in silence. At last, "Live here?" he asked.
"Yas, I lif here."
"Been here long?"
"In America? Yes. I guess five--sax--year. Oh, I lak it goot."
"I mean here, in this place."
"Oh, here? Yas, two, t'ree year. I lak it goot too."
"Know any one here?"
"Oh, yas. I know people I vork by yet."
"Who are they?"
"Oh, I vork by many place--make garten--und vork wit' horses, und so.
Meesus Craikmile, I vork by her on garten. She iss dere no more."
The young man paused suddenly in his stride. "Gone? Where is she
gone?"
"Oh, she iss by ol' country gone. Her man iss gone mit." They walked
on.
"What! Is the Elder gone, too?"
"Yas. You know heem, yas?"
"Oh, yes. I know everybody here. I've been away for a good while."
"So? Yas, yust lak me. I was gone too goot wile, bot I coom back too,
yust lak you."
Here they came to a turn in the road, and the village lights began to
wink out through the darkness, and their ways parted.
"I'm going this way," said the young man. "You turn off here? Well,
good night."
"Vell, goot night." The Swede sauntered away down a by-path, and the
young man kept on the main road to the village and entered its one
hotel where he had engaged a room a few hours before.