THE TURKEY MOGUL ARRIVES.
I studied Becky Weir in school, the next day, with special interest. She
was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with the stately, substantial
presence of one of nature's own goddesses. She had a fresh, constant
color in her cheeks, a pure, low forehead, and eyes that were clear,
gray, and large, but with a strangely appealing, helplessly animal
expression in them, I fancied, as she lifted them, oft-times, to mine.
She was distinguished among my young disciples by the faithful, though
evidently labored and wearisome attention, she gave to her books.
Her glance, bent on some small wretch who was misbehaving, had a
peculiarly significant force. The little ones all seemed to love her and
to stand rather in awe of her, too.
Entering the school-room in the morning, she discovered a network of
strings, which one Lemuel Biddy had artfully laid between the desks,
intending thereby to waylay and prostrate his human victim, and stooping
down, she boxed the miscreant, not cruelly but effectively, on the ears.
I was surprised to see that the boy seemed to regard this infliction as
the simple and natural award of justice, bowed his head and wept
penitently, and was subdued for some time afterward.
To me, whose earliest years had been guided and illuminated on the
principle that reason and persuasion alone are to be used in the training
of the tender twig, this little occurrence afforded food for serious
wonder and reflection. I doubted if the logic of the sages or the wooing
of the celestial seraphim would have wrought with such convincing power
on the mind and ears of Lemuel Biddy.
If Rebecca perchance, after painfully protracted exertions, succeeded in
working out some simple problem in arithmetic, her slate containing the
solution was freely handed about among her unaspiring comrades; so that I
judged her to be "weakly generous" as well as "plodding,"--qualities not
of a high order, I esteemed, yet by no means insuperable barriers to
friendship when found to enter more or less largely into the composition
of one's friends.
There was something in my novel relation to the girl as her teacher
peculiarly fascinating to me. At recess she remained in her seat and kept
quietly at her work.
I went down and stood over her. "Can I help you, my dear?" I said.
Whatever might have been the pedantic or obtrusively condescending
quality of those words, Rebecca seemed to find nothing distasteful in
them. She looked up with a "Thank you," and a pleased, trustful face like
a child's. "I can't do this one," said she. "I've finished the rest, but
this wouldn't come right, somehow."
It was a sum in simple addition. I could not help a feeling of deep
surprise and commiseration that one of Rebecca's age should have stumbled
at it at all, but I essayed to examine it very closely and worked it out
for her as slowly as possible. "Do you see your mistake?" I said.
She blushed painfully. The tears almost stood in her eyes.
"Yes, and I knew you'd have to find out how dull I was," she said; "but I
dreaded it. When Miss Waite was here, mother was sick and I didn't go to
school at all, and Miss Waite took me for a friend; and I told mother I'd
most rather not go to school to you, for Miss Waite said you'd be a real
friend, and I knew you wouldn't want me when you found how dull I was."
I looked at the girl, and a bright, hesitating smile woke in her face.
"Do you know, Rebecca," I said, "I don't choose my friends for their
mental qualifications--for what they know; I select them just as people
do horses--by their teeth. Let me see yours."
Rebecca laughed most musically, thus disclosing two brilliant rows of
ivories. I had noticed them before.
"You'll do!" I exclaimed, lightly. "I take you into my heart of hearts.
Now, what is your standard of choice? What charming characteristic do you
First require in a friend, Rebecca?"
"Oh!" said she, gasping a little and speaking very slowly;
"I--don't--know. I--don't--think--I've got any."
"Don't be afraid lest you shall guess something that I have not, my
dear," I said; "You can hardly go astray. Begin with modesty, if you
please, truly the chief of virtues."
Rebecca caught quickly the meaning in my tone, and answered with a low
ripple of laughter. When I urged her, she grew gravely embarrassed.
"Well," said she; "I don't think I should want anybody that I thought I
couldn't ever help them any, you know. That wouldn't ever need me, I
mean, and I know," she went on more hastily; "it seems funny to say that
to you, because it seems as though there wasn't anything that I could
ever do for you--because you--you seem--not to need anybody--but I didn't
know but some time--there might be something--I thought--maybe--some
time."
Rebecca paused and looked up at me with that pitifully beseeching
expression in her eyes.
"Oh, yes," I answered, still carelessly; "no doubt I shall be a great
burden to you in time. But you do help me now, dear, by your conduct in
school. You helped me this morning when you boxed Lemuel Biddy's ears.
I shall have to take boxing lessons of you."
"You be the scholar," Rebecca answered quickly, her lips parting again
with a merry outburst of laughter.
"Wretch!" said I, well pleased but affecting a tone of deep severity;
"you must not be saucy to your teacher! I shall keep you in the rest of
your recess for that.
"Do you like to study, Rebecca?" I added presently.
"No-o," said she, much abashed at the admission, and yet evidently
incapable of speaking otherwise than according to the simple dictates of
her conscience. "I don't think I should care anything about it if it
didn't make you so dull not to. I mean," she continued; "perhaps I might
'a' liked it if I'd been to school right along, but we never did. And I
was to the mills up to Taunton. I didn't stay long there. Then mother was
sick. They don't any of the scholars be let to go very regular. Sometimes
they're wanted to work out. So they forget. So they don't care much, I
think. They get to dreading it. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't
think it so much blame--our bein' so backward."
"It is the faithful improvement of what opportunities we have, Rebecca,"
I began and then paused, somewhat confused by the throng of lively
reminiscences which suddenly crowded my mental horoscope. "You are
young yet, my dear," I concluded gravely, with a resigned sigh for my own
departed youth; "you can make up for lost time. It is pleasant to give,
but there may be circumstances in which it is our duty imperatively to
receive. You must let me do all I can for you this winter. I do want you
for a friend, but I would rather it should be on these plainly implied
conditions."
Rebecca had been studying my face, thoughtfully, with a still expression
of wonder.
"I'll try to learn," said she, slowly. "I'll do anything you want me to."
"Do you like to read?" I inquired, in a brighter tone.
"Stories?" said Rebecca, a sparkle waking in her eyes.
"Stories mixed with other things," I insisted, gently; and was then
compelled to wonder how many of those "other things" had found their way
into the literary appointment of my trunk.
"I'll try," said Rebecca.
"Come to the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will
talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will
select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly
though severe penetration.
"I'd rather you would," said Rebecca, obediently.
To inflict this particular sort of patronage was a delightfully new
experience for me. The glaring inconsistencies which confronted me at
every turn only gave a heightened zest to the pursuit.
When I went to the door to blow the horn I felt that Rebecca already
regarded me as her patron, guide, and spiritual mentor, and I was
seriously resolved to fill these positions hopefully for her and with
credit to myself. With respect to the rest of my flock, I felt a
different sort of interest--the wide-awake concern of one who finds
himself suddenly perched on the back of a mettlesome, untried steed.
Any one member of that benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning
and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful
labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant mass, the aspect
of the field was appalling.
I was especially impressed with this view of the case when I went to toot
them in from those free and reckless diversions in, which their souls
expanded and their bodies became as the winged creatures of the earth.
The horn was still an object of terror to me, though experience had made
me wise enough to institute, on all occasions, a careful preliminary
search for buttons.
Its blast, freighted with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive
innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart,
and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the "Dar' to
be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!" which floated across the lane, had
but a doubtfully inspiriting effect.
I felt, indeed, like a Daniel doomed to convocate my own lions, and
lacking that faith in a preserving Providence which is believed to have
cheered and elevated the spirit of the ancient prophet, I confidently
expected, on the whole, to be devoured.
Gathered into their den, my lively herd gasped some moments as though
suffering the last loud agony of expiring breath, and then, bethinking
them of that only one of their free and native elements now obtainable,
they sent up a universal cry for "water!"
Ah! what to do with them through the long hours of the day--beautiful
creatures! by no means unlovable, with their bright, clear eyes, their
restless, restless feet, their overflowing spirits; their bodies all
alive, but with minds unfitted by birth, unskilled by domestic
discipline, to any sort of earnest and prolonged effort. Long, weary
hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and
inquiring mind--ah, no!--but of a desperately sustained struggle in
which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients,
with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over
this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night,
and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired,
tired, tired!
The parents of the children "dropped in" often at the Ark, and savored
the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations
on methods of discipline.
"I want my children whipped," said Mr. Randall Alden. "That's what they
need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any--and I tell
the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in
the school."
"Ye can't drive Milton P.," said that hopeful's mother. "He's been drove
so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him,
nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be
no trouble in the school."
"Well," said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall,
angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her
cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage
my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've
been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always made out to mind
by doin' pretty much as they was a mind to. They're smart boys, too," she
added, with sincere pride; "but they don't take to larnin'. I never see
sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be
whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog,
and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and
so Sim, says he,--I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to
stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man,
he tried it, and in the course of a day or two, he come around to Sim,
and wanted to know if he couldn't go back to clarin' bog again."
Emily took in the broadly contemplative expression on Grandma Keeler's
benign features, and then winked at me facetiously: "I tell 'em if they
was all like that," said she; "and I guess they be, pretty much, they
might as well be out o' doors as in, and less worryin' to the teacher."
It might have been the third day of my labors in Wallencamp that a man,
having the appearance of a lame giant, entered the school-room, and
advanced to meet me with an imposing dignity of mien. He held captive,
with one powerful hand, a stubbornly speechless, violently struggling
boy. I recognized the man as Godfrey Cradlebow, the handsome fiddler's
father, and the boy was none other than the imp whose eyes, scorching and
defiant now, had first sent mocking glances back at me while their
light-limbed owner kicked out a jaunty rigadoon from under the encircling
folds of his sacerdotal vestments.
"Miss Hungerford, I beg your pardon," said the elder Cradlebow, with a
distinct, refined enunciation foreign to the native element of
Wallencamp, whose ordinary locution had something of a Hoosier accent
"After a good deal of trouble in catching him, I have finally succeeded
in bringing you in this--a--this little dev"--he made an impressive
pause, patted his fiery offspring on the head with fatherly dignity, and
eyed him, at once doubtfully and reflectively.
I was interested in observing the aspect of the two faces.
"The little boy resembles you, I think," I said.
The lame man struck his cane down hard upon the floor and laughed
immoderately.
"If you knew what I had in my mind to say!" he exclaimed--"ah! that was
well put, well put!--though but dubiously complimentary, but dubiously
so, I assure you, either to father or son!"
The idea still continuing to tickle him, he laughed more gently, beating
a sympathetic tattoo with his cane on the floor.
"To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here," he went on, at
length, "this little--well, for present purposes, we will call him the
_Phenomenon_. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused.
This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one
in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band--" here Mr. Cradlebow
raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a
fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa
Keeler had said about Godfrey Cradlebow's "sprees"--"some of that
beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already
know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in
the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace,
and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children,
I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother." Again, he lifted his hand
to his eyes. "Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but
amenable--there it is, amenable--but this lad"--Mr. Cradlebow paused
again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined
further expression.
"What is your name?" I inquired of the little boy, hopefully.
"Simmy B.," he answered revengefully in a tone of alarming hoarseness.
"Such colds as that boy has!" exclaimed the paternal Cradlebow. "They're
like all the rest of him--they're phenomenal. There are times when that
boy appears to be nothing but one frightful, perambulating cold! Well,"
he sighed, "and yet it's a strange fact, that the more depraved and
miserable a little devil is, the more his mother'll coddle him.
"Now there's this one and my Lute--Luther Larkin--a good boy, but lacking
all capacity for rest--always lacking the capacity for rest--uneasy, both
of them--always uneasy! but how the mother would give her own rest for
them, and seem to love them the better for it! strange! They have always
been her idols, too. Well, I have captured Simeon and brought him in. I
hope you may keep him. The rest you must learn for yourself. The Lord
help me!" he groaned, as he picked up his cane, with evident physical
pain, and hobbled cut of the room.
Within the school-room, things resumed their customary, Niagara-like
roar, until a lamentable voice rose above the others, and was straightway
followed by another voice in indignant explanation.
"Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!"
"Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart
of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at
recess."
Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him
in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic
features in vain for any trace of repentance.
There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling,
sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation.
Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and
uplifted hands.
"Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a
slate-pencil!"
"He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of
protruding orbs.
"It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation--"It
wa'n't but harf a one!"
"He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all
breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his
m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it
t-t-t--and it slip-p-ped!"
"Wall, jest you keep your eyes peeled and your ears cocked," replied the
sturdy Simeon, in hoarse and jarring accents; "and see if I don't take it
out of my nose, yet."
The signs of that painful struggle slowly faded out of Simeon's face and
there was an unusual calm in the school-room.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour elapsed. I was thoughtfully engaged in
hearing one of my classes when startled by the sound of a window closed
with a sharp bang. At the same time arose the universal voice:
"Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder! Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder!"
I looked out across the snowless fields, and there having already scaled
two fences and put many a good rod between himself and the scene of his
brief imprisonment, I beheld, borne as on the wings of the wind, the form
of the retreating Simeon.
An incident at the close of my first week in Wallencamp was the visit of
the "Turkey Mogul." Such was the name given by the Wallencampers to Mr.
Baxter, the superintendent of schools.
Mr. Baxter lived many miles away in Farmouth, and was, properly, the
visitor of the schools in Farmouth County. Wallencamp was not in Farmouth
County. Nevertheless, Mr. Baxter had charge of the Wallencamp school. I
had been informed that he drove over at the beginning and close of each
term, put the scholars through the most "dreadful examins," and gave an
indiscriminate "blowin' up" to persons and things in the place. So I
looked forward to his coming with a curiosity not unmingled with more
doubtful emotions.
It was Friday, and so near the close of the afternoon session that I had
quite dismissed from my mind the contemplation of any dread advent for
that day. It was just at that trying hour of Friday afternoon when only
the spelling-classes remained to be heard, and teacher and scholars both
were conscious, the one with a deep inward sense of relief, the others
with many restless demonstrations of impatience, that the week was near
its close; and that "to-morrow" would be Saturday and a holiday.
Estella the raven-haired--familiarly known as the "Modoc," a long and
ungainly creature, with arms and legs so seemingly profuse and
unmanageable, that they reminded one of the tentacles of a
cuttle-fish--Estella was "passing around the water."
She was performing this accustomed office with a grin of such supreme
delight and satisfaction as seemed actually to illuminate the back of her
head, when the door of the school-room opened, and there, without any
previous warning, appeared a grim, fierce-looking little man, whom I knew
at once to be the "Turkey Mogul."
The extreme exigency of the case inspired me with a certain calmness of
despair. Having advanced to meet this august personage, conducted him to
the desk, and placed for him the official chair, which he shortly
refused, I lifted my eyes, "prepared for any fate," to observe what might
be the condition of my turbulent flock, and lo--all the tops, and
Jews-harps, and apples, and whirligigs, and miniature buzz-saws had
disappeared, and there was an array of pallid faces bent over another
array of books--many of the latter were upside down, but the effect was
unbroken. Even Estella, moved by some sudden divine sense of the fitness
of things, had ceased her desultory wanderings about the room with the
tin dipper, and, not having had time to procure a book, was working out
imaginary problems on her fingers with the air of a Herschel, and I
became slowly conscious that there was such a stillness in that room as
had not been--no, nor anything like unto it,--since the first time I
entered there.
I think Mr. Baxter must have observed something of the look of helpless
astonishment which transfixed my features. I certainly saw the shadow of
a smile lurking in his steel-gray eyes.
"Yes," he snarled, addressing the school; "yes, if I didn't know you,
now, and if your books were not, most of 'em, bottom side up, and if I
shouldn't be compelled in two minutes to prove the contrary, I might
possibly imagine that you were studying--yes--humph!"
I said to Mr. Baxter, as cheerfully as possible, that "we were nearly
through with our usual routine of classes for the day, but I should be
happy, of course, to repeat any of the recitations which he might care to
hear."
"Would you?" said he, looking at me not unpleasantly. "Do you really ask
me to believe that? um-m-m," he murmured, resuming his stern aspect. "Let
me see--Geography--yes, Miss Hungerford, you may call the first class in
Geography."
I did not accuse the Superintendent of Schools of malevolent intentions,
but I could honestly have affirmed that of all the divisions and
subdivisions of my empire the first class in Geography was the one least
calculated to shine on an occasion like the present.
I groaned inwardly, and called them forth. Their forlorn and wilted
appearance as they formed in line went to my heart. I was resolved to
defend them at whatever cost.
"Now," said Mr. Baxter, planting himself firmly, with his legs rather far
apart, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and staring steadily at the
shivering group from under his awful brows; "what _is_ Geography? To
begin with. That's the first thing. What _is_ Geography?"
For a moment there was no reply. I almost began to hope that there would
be none. I felt that here "Silence was golden," and if maintained, all
might be comparatively well; when, to my dismay, there was a sort of
flank movement in the ranks and the ill-starred Estella raised her hand.
"Well," said Mr. Baxter, pointing his finger steadfastly at her as if to
impart a vein of concentration to her palpably loose and floating
appearance; "You! You ought to know. What is Geography, eh?"
Some fair wreck of an idea, formerly appropriated in this connection,
floated through the brain of the "Mo-doc." She opened her mouth and in
those loud and startling accents, for which she was ever distinguished,
gave utterance to these memorable words:
"A--round! like a ball!"
Mr. Baxter glared fiercely at her for a moment, and then permitted his
scorn to escape in a long, sarcastic hiss.
"Yes-s-s," said he; "yes-s-s! around like a ball! Do you find it much in
your way, eh? Do you often give it such a kick as that, eh? Well, take
your seats! take your seats!"
The Superintendent of Schools seemed disinclined to evoke any further
catastrophes of this sort, but proceeded to discourse to me, aside, in a
confidential growl, on the peculiar and erratic natures of the benighted
Wallencampers.
"Their minds," he said, with a grim smile, "have no receptivity. They
must originate, or they are naught. Parents and children--they are all
the same. I am convinced that there is no scholarship to be established
here. It has been tried and the attempt has failed a hundred times. It's
not in the nature of things. Get on the good side of them, that's all.
That has failed sometimes, but it is not among the impossible things. Get
on the good side of them."
Finally, he turned to address the children. The "examins" had certainly
not been severe, but the "blowin' up" was faithfully and liberally
performed.
Never before had I felt so drawn to my poor, wondering, wolf-besieged
flock, and in proportion to my tenderness for them waxed my indignation
toward the "Turkey Mogul."
"You can't learn," said he. "That's a sufficiently established fact, but
if you don't behave, your teacher is going to write to me, mind! and I
shall come down here in my buggy, and take you right up and off to
Farmouth where we have a place to keep all such naughty boys and girls."
This last was evoked as a benediction. Mr. Baxter looked at his watch,
and remarked that it was a long drive to Farmouth, and he must be going.
"Dismiss your school, Miss Hungerford," he said.
Now the children were accustomed--it was a special privilege they had
requested--to sing, before the school closed at night, one of the hymns
with which they were all so familiar in Wallencamp.
I would have dismissed them, on this occasion, without further ceremony,
but before I had time to tap my ruler on the desk as a signal for
dismissal, they all struck up as with one voice:--
"What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our griefs and woes to share!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer."
At first I was a little amused at the incongruity of the thing. Then it
began to seem to me inexpressibly touching.
The Superintendent of Schools stood with a cold, supercilious grin on his
face, a stern, self-sufficient man, not one likely to echo the spirit of
these simple words.
I stood beside him, weary and perplexed enough, but ever taking counsel
of the pride of my own heart. And those poor children, with their hard,
toilsome, barren lives before them, how they sang! their clear, young
voices ringing out fearlessly, carelessly--they knew the words. I
wondered if any one in the room appreciated the song as having inner
truth and meaning.
As I was locking my desk, before leaving the room, I discovered this
little note, which Rebecca had dropped in it.
"dere teecher,
"I wanted to do sumthyng to help yu wen I seen him come in To Day
fur I new jus howe yu felt but thay wasent no wours than thay always
was, and he nose it! and thay studdid more fur yu I think than thay
did for any but I think it mus be harrd for yu not bein' use to us.
I think yu was tired. When we was singin' I thot howe tired yu was,
but thar' was always won to help. Excus writin' pleas but I wanted
to let yu no for yu was good to me and I luv yu.
Becky Weir."
Somehow, the little note rested and comforted me, more than I would have
imagined, a week before, any expression of this humble disciple of mine
could have done.
I held the letter crumpled in my hand going up the lane. Going up the
lane, too, I met Emily's fisherman coming gayly home from the river.
Mr. Rollin stopped, and gallantly requested the pleasure of carrying a
small book which I held in my hand. He walked back to the Ark with me,
talking very fluently the while.
"Do you know," he began; "I think I'm awfully fortunate meeting you here
in the lane. I've been wishing for an opportunity to speak with you for
two or three days past, but the Ark is such a popular resort for the
youth of Wallencamp, and the children seem to be always following you.
Well, they regard the school teacher as their special property, and would
Consider me worse than an intruder if I should go in to take even the
lowest seat in the synagogue. I've been wanting to speak with you ever
since that first night--when I stared at you so stupidly at Captain
Keeler's--when I went up to borrow the oars, and you were engaged, you
remember," said Mr. Rollin, laughing gently, "in wresting particles of
hulled corn from the ocean depths of that kettle."
"I remember," I said, trying to smother what annoyance I still felt at
the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very
good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to
know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if
he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he
shouldn't look to find a confidante in me.
"The hulled corn? Oh! yes, indeed!" he answered with a sprightly air.
"We have it served in the same way at Emily's, and we think it's
just--a--rich, you know. But I wanted to tell you. If you could have
known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that
night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a
fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to
amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming,
so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among
ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and
Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in
the _Three Fates_', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night
to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I
was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the
fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go
up to scoff, but I remained to pray."
My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle
praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased.
"Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste.
"Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the
literal glasses!"
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean
that--just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and
the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face--"if I
had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see
anything out of 'em or not!"
"You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a
sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain
reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even
with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was
a different person now, in a different sphere of action.
Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the
Wallencamp school--a doubtful position to his mind.
He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I
thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to
cheek.
Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle
worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of
expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat
baffling to the stern designs of justice.
"Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy
nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've
had the impudence--well, if either one of us two is going to be taken in,
Miss Hungerford, I can tell you it's a blamed sight more likely to be me;
but you're prejudiced against me, I can see. You were prejudiced against
me that first night. I know how those old women talk. They've got an
idea, somehow, that I'm a scapegrace, and a desperate character. And, on
my word, Miss Hungerford, I'm considered a real model chap there at home,
and make speeches to the little boys and girls in Sunday School, and all
that sort of thing. On my word, I do."
Mr. Rollin spoke quite warmly. I could not help laughing at his droll
self-vindication.
"I should like to ask you to speak to my little boys and girls!" I said;
"but it's too harrowing to the feelings. I listened to one address this
afternoon."
"The 'Turkey Mogul?' Oh, that isn't my style!" said Mr. Rollin. "I don't
sear their young vision with the prospect of eternal flames. I entice
them with the blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some
day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering
effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall
serve as an antidote--a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of
censorious criticism."
Thus the voluble fisherman ran on, with an air of simple and charming
ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and
aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs,
that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the
great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather _mal à propos_,
it might be that I ought to consider him providentially included in my
field of labor, and as one of the objects of my regenerating care.
Whether Mr. Rollin detected anything of this philanthropic intention I do
not know. When we got to the gate he said:--
"Will you go with me for a drive to-morrow, Miss Hungerford? You know
what the Wallencamp equipages are. They furnish entertainment, at all
events. The drive to West Wallen is really beautiful--even at this
season of the year, with such uncommonly fine weather, and you have a
holiday, and the mail hasn't been brought from West Wallen for nearly a
week."
I thanked the fisherman almost eagerly, thinking, at that instant, of the
longed-for letters that I knew were waiting for me in the West Wallen
Post Office.
Then, suddenly, I felt Rebecca's little note grow heavy in my hand.
To act voluntarily for others--to consider as serious any obstacles in
the way of following out my personal inclinations--these were experiences
too new to me, and my resolve was not a natural one, but forced and
impatient.
"You are very kind," I said; "but I can't go to-morrow."
The two little Keelers came running out of the Ark to meet me. I was
secretly relieved. Mr. Rollin had been watching me narrowly; his lips
curled, and his eyes flashed with a half angry, half scornful light. He
cast an unloving glance at the little Keelers.
"I can't, of course, question the justice of your decision," he said
shortly, and touched his hat and walked away without another word.
I considered this as one of the least among my many trials and
perplexities. Oftentimes I sighed for the light-hearted, "irresponsible"
days of yore, when "missions" were, as yet, to me unknown.
School was the greatest perplexity. Grandma Keeler's tenderness grew more
impressive each day.
"It seems to me you're a growin' bleak and holler-eyed, teacher," she
would say to me when I came home at night.
So I indulged more and more in a deeply sentimental self-pity, and felt a
growing satisfaction in the consciousness that I was enduring martyrdom.
It was more by reason of a stubborn and desperate pride, I think, than
from higher motives, that, in my letters home, I said nothing of the
discomforts and discouragements which attended my course. I chose to
dilate on the beautiful scenery of Wallencamp, and the quaint originality
of its inhabitants.