JENNY’S TEACHER
It was two o’clock when Jenny skipped to the side porch of the Rocky
Point farmhouse. Her grandmother, who was sitting there with her mending
basket at her side, looked up with the welcoming smile that she always
had for the girl. Dropping down on the wooden bench, back of which hung a
blossom-laden garland of Cecil Brunner rose vine, Jenny took off her
wide, flower-wreathed straw hat and began fanning her flushed face. The
sparkle in her soft brown eyes told the watcher at once that something of
an unusual nature had occurred. The old woman dropped her sewing on her
lap, pushed her spectacles up under her lavender-ribboned cap and then
said with a rising inflection: “Well, Jenny dearie, what have you been up
to?”
A peal of amused laughter was the girl’s first answer, followed by a
series of little chuckles that tried to form themselves into words but
couldn’t. Mirth is contagious and the old woman laughingly said: “Tut!
Tut! Jenny, don’t keep all the fun of it to yourself. What happened over
to the seminary that was so amusing? I reckoned you’d have sort of a hard
tune making things straight with Miss O’Hara, if she’s as snappy as poor
Etta Heldt said she was.”
Jenny became serious at once, and, leaning forward, she began earnestly:
“Miss O’Hara is kindhearted, Granny Sue, but she does seem to have a
powerful lot to worry her. Etta didn’t try to be real helpful, I know
that, although I was so sorry for her, and when I told Miss O’Hara all
about the poor orphan, there were tears in her eyes, honestly there were,
Granny, and she said that when the next orphan came, she’d try to make
that kitchen more homelike.”
Her listener was pleased and nodded many times, as she commented: “Well,
well, that’s somethin’ now that my Jenny gal has brought to pass, but it
wasn’t about that you were having such a spell of laughin’, I reckon.”
Again there were twinkles in the brown eyes as the girl confessed: “No,
Granny Sue, it wasn’t, and in as many years as Rip Van Winkle slept, you
couldn’t guess what it was.”
The old woman looked puzzled, as she always did when Jenny quoted from
some of her “readin’ books.” “Wall, I reckon I couldn’t, bein’ as I don’t
know how long the lazy fellow slept, so I reckon you’d better tell me
what you’ve been up to over to the seminary.”
She had replaced her glasses and was again sewing a patch on an old shirt
of Grandpa Si’s, but she looked up when the girl said: “You’ll be
astonished as can be, because you never even guessed that your
granddaughter knew how to wait on table, stylish-like, with all the
flourishes.”
Down went the sewing, up went the glasses, and an expression of shocked
displeasure was in the sweet blue eyes of the old woman.
“Jenny Warner, am I hearin’ right? Are yo’ tellin’ me that my gal waited
on table over to the seminary?”
The girl looked puzzled. Grandma Sue was taking almost tragically what
Jenny had considered in the light of a merry adventure.
“Why, yes, Granny, I did. You don’t mind, do you? You have always wanted
me to help where help was needed, and surely poor Miss O’Hara needed a
waitress. If we hadn’t spirited Etta away, she would have been there. You
see, don’t you, Grandma, that I just had to help?”
“Yes, yes, I reckon like as not you did, but don’t do it again, Jenny,
don’t! Promise, just to please your old Grandma Sue.”
The girl placed her hat on the bench and went to her grandmother’s side
and knelt, her head nestled lovingly against the old woman’s shoulder.
“Why, Granny, dearie,” she said contritely, “I didn’t suppose you’d mind.
Why is it that you do?” She was plainly perplexed.
But the old woman had no intention of telling the girl she so loved that
she could not bear the thought of having her act as a servant to her own
sister, Gwynette. And so she replied with an assumed cheeriness: “Just a
notion, dearie, like as not. I feel that our gal is as good, and heaps
better’n a lot of them seminary pupils, and I guess I sort of don’t like
the idea of you waitin’ on ’em.” Then anxiously: “It won’t happen again,
will it, Jenny?”
The girl kissed her grandmother lovingly. Then rising, she put her hat on
her sun-glinted head as she replied: “It won’t be necessary, because Peg,
the real waitress, will be well again tomorrow. She had one of her blind
headaches today, but I did promise to go over Monday after school and do
Etta’s work, preparing vegetables. You don’t mind that, do you, Granny
dear. The new orphan will be there by Tuesday surely.”
“Well, well, you do whatever you think right. That heart o’ yourn won’t
take you far wrong. You’re goin’ over to your school-teacher’s now,
aren’t you, dearie? She’ll be expectin’ you.”
The girl nodded, skipped into the house to get a book, returned, saying
as she went down the path: “This is our mythology lesson day. Good-bye,
Granny dear. I’ll be home in time to get supper.”
As Jenny drove Dobbin along the coast highway, she wondered why her
grandmother had objected so seriously to the act of kindness that she had
done. Her teacher, Miss Dearborn, had so often said: “Jeanette, it isn’t
what we do that counts, it is what we are.” Surely Jenny had been no
different from what she really was when she had been filling cups with
steaming golden brown chocolate. Moreover, Granny Sue hadn’t minded in
the least that time, last year, when Jenny had gone over to the cabin
home of the poor forlorn squatter family in the sycamore woods and had
cleaned it out thoroughly.
She had found the mother sick in bed and the three children almost
spoiling for a bath. Jenny smiled as she recalled how she had taken them,
one after another, down to the creek in the canon below the cabin, and
had washed them, showing the oldest, Rosa, who was eight, how to give
future baths to Sara, aged five, and Elmer, aged two. And after that she
had driven, at Miss Dearborn’s suggestion, into Santa Barbara to tell the
Visiting Nurse’s Association about the poor squatter family. Grandma Sue
had been pleased, then, to have Jenny serve others. Why did she object to
a similar service for Miss O’Hara? This being unanswerable, the girl
decided to drive through the Sycamore Canon Road, as it was really but a
little out of her way, and see how the squatter’s family was progressing.
It became very cool as she turned out of the sunshine of the broad
highway, and the deeper she drove into the canon, the damper and more
earth fragrant the air. Great old sycamore trees that had grown in most
picturesque angles were on either side of the narrow dirt road, and
crossing and recrossing, under little rustic bridges, rambled the brook
which in the spring time danced along as though it also were brimming
over with the joy of living. The cabin in which the Pascoli family lived
had been long abandoned when they had taken possession. It stood in a
more open spot, where, for a few hours each day, the sunlight came. It
was partly adobe (from which its former white-washed crust had broken
away in slabs) and partly logs. A rose vine, which Jenny had given to the
older girl, was bravely trying to climb up about the door, and along the
front of the cabin were ferns transplanted from the brookside.
When Jenny hallooed, there was a joyful answering cry from within, and
three children, far cleaner than when they had first been found, raced
out, their truly beautiful Italian faces beaming their pleasure. They
climbed up on the sides of the wagon shouting, in child-like fashion, “O,
Miss Jenny, did you fetch us any honey?”
“No, dearies. I didn’t! And I don’t believe you’ve eaten all that I
brought you last week, have they, Mrs. Pascoli?” the girl looked over
Sara’s head to the dark-eyed woman who appeared in the open door carrying
a wee baby wrapped in a shawl. She replied: “No, ma’am! The beggars they
are!” Then came a rebuking flow of Italian which had the effect desired,
for the three youngsters climbed down and said in a subdued chorus,
“No’m, we ain’t et it, and thanks for it till it’s gone.” the latter part
of the sentence being added by Sara alone. Jenny smiled at them, then
said to the woman:
“You’re quite well again, Mrs. Pascoli. I’m so glad! Grandpa tells me
that your husband is working steadily now. Next week I’ll bring some more
honey and eggs. Good-bye.”
The girl soon turned out of the canon on to a foothill road and after a
short climb came suddenly upon a low built white house that had a
wonderful view of the ocean and islands.
She turned in at the drive, the gate posts of which were pepper trees,
and at once she saw her beloved teacher, Miss Dearborn, working in her
garden.
The woman, who was about thirty-five, looked up with a welcoming smile
which she reserved for this her only pupil. “Jenny Warner, you’re an hour
late,” she merrily rebuked. “Hitch Dobbin and come in. I have some news
to tell you.”
“O, Miss Dearborn, is it good news? I’m always so dreading the bad news
that, some day, I just know you are going to tell me. It isn’t that,
yet?”
The woman, whose strong, kind, intelligent face was shaded with a
wide-brimmed garden hat, smiled at the girl, then more seriously she
said: “Shall you mind so very much when the call comes for me to go back
East?”
Jenny nodded, unexpected tears in her eyes. “East is so far, so very far
away, and you’ve been here for—well—for as many years as I have been
going to school.”
“Ten, to be exact,” was the reply. “But that isn’t my news today. It is
something about you, and you’ll be ever so excited when you hear it.”
Miss Dearborn led the way into a long, cool living room which extended
entirely across the front of the house. In one end of it was a large
stone fireplace, on either side of which were glassed-in book shelves.
There were Navajo rugs on the hardwood floor, a piano at the opposite
end, deep, cozily cushioned seats under the wide plate-glass windows that
framed such wonderful views of sea, rocky promontory and islands,
mist-hung.
In the middle was a long library table and everywhere were chairs
inviting ease. Great bowls of glowing yellow poppies stood in many places
about the long room. This had been Jenny Warner’s second home, and Miss
Dearborn a most beneficial influence in her development.
Having removed her garden hat, a mass of soft, light brown hair was
revealed. Seating herself at one end of the table, the older woman
motioned the girl to a chair at her side.
For a long moment she looked at her earnestly. “Jenny,” she said at last,
“I believe you are old enough to be told something about me, but since it
is not nearly as important as the something about you, I will begin with
that.”
Jenny, not in the least understanding why, felt strangely excited. “Oh,
Miss Dearborn, if only it hasn’t anything to do with your going back
East.”
A strong white hand was placed over the smaller one that was lying on the
table, and for a searching moment the gray eyes met the brown. “I
believe, after all, I will have to tell you the part about myself first
in order that you may more clearly understand the part about you,” Miss
Dearborn said. “I never told you why I came West ten years ago. It was
this way. When I was fifteen, I went to a boarding school in Boston and
met there a girl, Beatrice Malcolm, who became, through the four years
that followed, as dear to me as an own sister would have been. She was
not strong and she never had been able to bear disappointment. I always
gave in to her and tried to shield her whenever I could. She clung to me,
depended on me and loved me, if not quite as devotedly as I loved her, at
least very dearly. When we left boarding school we visited each other for
weeks at a time. She came to my Cape Cod home in the summer, and I went
to her New York home in the winter, and so we shared the same friends and
were glad to do so, until Eric Austin came into our lives. Eric and I
were unusually companionable. He loved books and nature and especially
the sea. He had come to Cape Cod to write a group of poems and I met him
at our Literary Club. He came often to my home and we read together day
after day. Then Beatrice came for her annual summer visit, and, after
that there were three of us at the readings. Eric’s voice was deep,
musical and stirringly expressive. I began to notice that Beatrice hung
on every word that he uttered as though he were a young god. There was
something poetically beautiful about his fine face. Then, one day, she
confessed to me that if she could not win Eric Austin’s love, she would
not care to live. This was cruelly hard for me, because I also loved Eric
and he had told me that my love was returned. Indeed, I had not allowed
myself to really care, until I knew that he cared, but I had told him
that I wanted to wait until we had known each other at least through one
summer.”
Miss Dearborn paused and gazed out of the window at the blue sea
shimmering in the distance, then turned and smiled into the sensitive,
responsive face of the girl at her side. Almost tearfully, Jenny said:
“Oh, Miss Dearborn, I know what you did. You gave up the man you loved
for that selfish girl.”
The woman shook her head. “Not selfish! Just spoiled, and I had helped,
for I had always given up to her, and that is what I did. I pretended not
to care. I left them much alone, and then, when the summer was over, I
closed my Cape Cod home and came West. Eric was deeply hurt, and wrote me
that, although he never could care for anyone as he did for me, he was
going to marry Beatrice and would try to make her as happy as he had
hoped to make me. That was all. They were married while I was settling in
this new home. Year after year Beatrice has written that some day she
wants me to come and visit them, and she has named her oldest girl after
me. Little Catherine is now eight. That is all about me. Now I will tell
the something about you.”
Jenny, deeply affected by what she had heard, said with a little half
sob: “Oh, Miss Dearborn, it makes my heart ache to think that you have
lived all these years so alone when you might have had the companionship
of that man who really loved you. I just know he never could have loved
your friend Beatrice. She must have known you cared and she let you make
that cruel sacrifice.”
Before answering the older woman took the girl’s hand and held it in a
close clasp as she said earnestly: “Jenny, dear, I gave up much, very
much, but think what I won. You, for instance. I had thought that I might
have a daughter, as I suppose all girls, growing into young womanhood,
dream that, some day, they will marry and have children, and that
daughter, I now believe, would have been like you. So you see I gained
something very precious.” There were tears in Jenny’s tender brown eyes
as she replied: “Oh. Miss Dearborn, I am the one who has gained. I just
can’t picture life without you. I remember so well when you first came.
You heard that our little schoolhouse down on the coast highway was to be
closed because the board of education was not allowed to pay a teacher’s
salary unless there were eight pupils to attend the school. There were
only five of us, the four from the Anderson Bean Ranch and me. You
offered to teach us for nothing, saying that you wanted to do something
for children. I didn’t know that until long afterwards, then Grandma told
me how it had all come about. We were too little to go on the bus to the
big schools in Santa Barbara.”
“I’m glad indeed that I did it,” Miss Dearborn put in, “but, of course,
when the Andersons moved back to their Iowa farm and you were the only
pupil we closed that coast highway school and had our lessons here, and
such an inspiration as they have been to me, Jenny Warner! I just know
that you are leading up to an expression of gratitude. I’ve heard it time
and again and I do appreciate it, dear girl, but now that you know the
great loneliness that was in my heart when I came West, you will readily
understand that having you to teach filled a void, filled it beautifully,
and so, I also have a deep sense of gratitude toward you.”
“And two years ago,” Jenny continued retrospectively, “when we completed
the work of the sixth grade, you can’t think how unhappy I was, for I
supposed that at last I would have to leave you and go by bus each day to
the Santa Barbara Junior High, and I never shall forget that wonderful
day when you told me you had received permission to teach me through the
eighth grade.”
Miss Dearborn laughed happily. “What I never told you, Jenny, was that
the board of education insisted that I take an examination at their State
Normal to prove to them that I knew enough to teach one lone pupil the
higher grade work. I brushed up evenings and passed creditably.”
Impulsively the girl pressed the woman’s hand to her cheek. “Oh, Miss
Dearborn,” she exclaimed tremulously, “to _think_ that you did _all_ that
_just_ for me.”
“Wrong you are, Jenny girl!” the woman sang out. “I did it first of all
for Catherine Dearborn. I felt a panic in my heart I had not dreamed
possible when I thought that I was to be left all alone, day in and day
out, with only memory for company. I wanted to keep you, to teach you, to
love you, and I did keep you, but now along comes a letter from the same
board of education. If we thought they had forgotten us, we are mistaken.
That’s my news about you.”
Opening a small drawer in the end of the table, Miss Dearborn took out a
letter and read:
“Miss Jenny Warner will be required to take the entrance examination in
all the subjects at the High School of Santa Barbara during the week of
June 10th. The results of these tests will determine where she is to
continue her studies.”
The girl’s lovely face was the picture of dismay. “Oh, Miss Dearborn, I
can’t! I can’t! I’d be simply frightened to death to even enter the door
of that imposing building, and if any of the pupils as much as spoke to
me, I’d simply expire.” Her teacher laughed. “Nonsense!” she declared.
“Not only must my pupil enter the door but she must pass the tests with
high grades if I am to be permitted to teach her another year.”
Then to change the girl’s thought, Miss Dearborn continued brightly:
“Saturday is our mythology day, isn’t it? But since you came late and we
have spent so much time visiting, we will not go up into the hills as we
usually do for this lesson. Let me see. Weren’t you to write something
about Apollo, Diana and Echo that I might know if you fully understand
just what each stands for in poetry and art?”
“Oh, Miss Dearborn,” Jenny laughed as she drew a paper from her book, “I
don’t know what you will say about the composition I tried to write. It
isn’t good, I know, but I ever so much wanted to write it in verse. Shall
you mind my trying?” The girl’s manner was inquiring and apologetic at
the same time.
“Of course not,” was the encouraging reply. “We all reach an age when we
want to write our thoughts in rhyme. Read it to me.”
And so timidly Jenny began:
At Sunrise
Gray mists veil the dawn of day,
Silver winged they speed away,
When across a road of gold
In his shining chariot rolled
Young Apollo. Day’s fair King
Bids the birds awake and sing!
Robin, skylark, linnet, thrush
From each glen and flower-glad bush
Burst their throats with warbles gay
To welcome back the King of Day.
Diana, huntress, Apollo’s twin,
Standing in a forest dim,
A quiver on one shoulder fair
Filled with arrows. (In her hair
A moonlike crescent.) Calls her hounds
To new adventures with them bounds,
While lovely Echo in the hill,
Though grieving for Narcissus still,
Must need call back their song or bay,
And so is dawned a glad new day.
Miss Dearborn smiled as she commented: “Dear girl, there is no need to
blush about this, your first effort at verse. I am going to suggest that
you write all of your compositions on this poetical subject in rhyme.
Keep them and let us see how much better the last will be than the
first.” Then after a thoughtful moment: “Dawn is a subject much loved by
the poets.”
Then she quoted from Byron:
“The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom;
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn
(Living as if earth contained no tomb)
And glowing into day.”
“Oh, Miss Dearborn,” was Jenny’s enthusiastic comment, “how happy I will
be when my memory holds as many poems as you know. It will add to the
loveliness of every scene to know what some poet has thought about one
that was similar.”
“You are right, dear, it does.” Then rising, Miss Dearborn said: “Come
with me to the porch dining room. I hear the kettle calling us to
afternoon tea.”