As the master of the Indian Spring school emerged from the pine woods
into the little clearing before the schoolhouse, he stopped whistling,
put his hat less jauntily on his head, threw away some wild flowers he
had gathered on his way, and otherwise assumed the severe demeanor of
his profession and his mature age--which was at least twenty. Not that
he usually felt this an assumption; it was a firm conviction of his
serious nature that he impressed others, as he did himself, with the
blended austerity and ennui of deep and exhausted experience.
The building which was assigned to him and his flock by the Board of
Education of Tuolumne County, California, had been originally a church.
It still bore a faded odor of sanctity, mingled, however, with a later
and slightly alcoholic breath of political discussion, the result of its
weekly occupation under the authority of the Board as a Tribune for the
enunciation of party principles and devotion to the Liberties of the
People. There were a few dog-eared hymn-books on the teacher's desk, and
the blackboard but imperfectly hid an impassioned appeal to the citizens
of Indian Spring to “Rally” for Stebbins as Supervisor. The master had
been struck with the size of the black type in which this placard
was printed, and with a shrewd perception of its value to the round
wandering eyes of his smaller pupils, allowed it to remain as a pleasing
example of orthography. Unfortunately, although subdivided and spelt by
them in its separate letters with painful and perfect accuracy, it was
collectively known as “Wally,” and its general import productive of
vague hilarity.
Taking a large key from his pocket, the master unlocked the door and
threw it open, stepping back with a certain precaution begotten of his
experience in once finding a small but sociable rattlesnake coiled up
near the threshold. A slight disturbance which followed his intrusion
showed the value of that precaution, and the fact that the room had been
already used for various private and peaceful gatherings of animated
nature. An irregular attendance of yellow-birds and squirrels dismissed
themselves hurriedly through the broken floor and windows, but a golden
lizard, stiffened suddenly into stony fright on the edge of an
open arithmetic, touched the heart of the master so strongly by its
resemblance to some kept-in and forgotten scholar who had succumbed over
the task he could not accomplish, that he was seized with compunction.
Recovering himself, and re-establishing, as it were, the decorous
discipline of the room by clapping his hands and saying “Sho!” he passed
up the narrow aisle of benches, replacing the forgotten arithmetic, and
picking up from the desks here and there certain fragmentary pieces of
plaster and crumbling wood that had fallen from the ceiling, as if
this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves overnight. When he
reached his own desk he lifted the lid and remained for some moments
motionless, gazing into it. His apparent meditation however was simply
the combined reflection of his own features in a small pocket-mirror in
its recesses and a perplexing doubt in his mind whether the sacrifice of
his budding moustache was not essential to the professional austerity
of his countenance. But he was presently aware of the sound of small
voices, light cries, and brief laughter scattered at vague and remote
distances from the schoolhouse--not unlike the birds and squirrels he
had just dispossessed. He recognized by these signs that it was nine
o'clock, and his scholars were assembling.
They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always
as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or
dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less
coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices
scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always
preoccupied by something else than the actual business on hand;
appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails;
cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and
purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to
school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final arrival that the
master, who had a few moments before failed to descry a single torn
straw hat or ruined sun-bonnet above his visible horizon, was always
startled to find them suddenly under his windows, as if, like the birds,
they had alighted from the trees. Nor was their moral attitude towards
their duty any the more varied; they always arrived as if tired and
reluctant, with a doubting sulkiness that perhaps afterwards beamed into
a charming hypocrisy, but invariably temporizing with their instincts
until the last moment, and only relinquishing possible truancy on the
very threshold. Even after they were marshalled on their usual
benches they gazed at each other every morning with a perfectly fresh
astonishment and a daily recurring enjoyment of some hidden joke in this
tremendous rencontre.
It had been the habit of the master to utilize these preliminary
vagrancies of his little flock by inviting them on assembling to recount
any interesting incident of their journey hither; or failing this, from
their not infrequent shyness in expressing what had secretly interested
them, any event that had occurred within their knowledge since they last
met. He had done this, partly to give them time to recover themselves
in that more formal atmosphere, and partly, I fear, because,
notwithstanding his conscientious gravity, it greatly amused him. It
also diverted them from their usual round-eyed, breathless contemplation
of himself--a regular morning inspection which generally embraced every
detail of his dress and appearance, and made every change or deviation
the subject of whispered comment or stony astonishment. He knew that
they knew him more thoroughly than he did himself, and shrank from the
intuitive vision of these small clairvoyants.
“Well?” said the master gravely.
There was the usual interval of bashful hesitation, verging on nervous
hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the last six months this
question by the master had been invariably received each morning as a
veiled pleasantry which might lead to baleful information or conceal
some query out of the dreadful books before him. Yet this very element
of danger had its fascinations. Johnny Filgee, a small boy, blushed
violently, and, without getting up, began hurriedly in a high key, “Tige
ith got,” and then suddenly subsided into a whisper.
“Speak up, Johnny,” said the master encouragingly.
“Please, sir, it ain't anythin' he's seed--nor any real news,” said
Rupert Filgee, his elder brother, rising with family concern and
frowning openly upon Johnny; “it's jest his foolishness; he oughter be
licked.” Finding himself unexpectedly on his feet, and apparently at the
end of a long speech, he colored also, and then said hurriedly, “Jimmy
Snyder--HE seed suthin'. Ask HIM!” and sat down--a recognized hero.
Every eye, including the master's, was turned on Jimmy Snyder. But that
youthful observer, instantly diving his head and shoulders into his
desk, remained there gurgling as if under water. Two or three nearest
him endeavored with some struggling to bring him to an intelligible
surface again. The master waited patiently. Johnny Filgee took advantage
of the diversion to begin again in a high key, “Tige ith got thix,” and
subsided.
“Come, Jimmy,” said the master, with a touch of peremptoriness. Thus
adjured, Jimmy Snyder came up glowingly, and bristling with full stops
and exclamation points. “Seed a black b'ar comin' outer Daves' woods,”
he said excitedly. “Nigh to me ez you be. 'N big ez a hoss; 'n snarlin'!
'n snappin'!--like gosh! Kem along--ker--clump torords me. Reckoned he'd
skeer me! Didn't skeer me worth a cent. I heaved a rock at him--I did
now!” (in defiance of murmurs of derisive comment)--“'n he slid. Ef
he'd kem up furder I'd hev up with my slate and swotted him over the
snoot--bet your boots!”
The master here thought fit to interfere, and gravely point out that
the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-slate was
equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of Tuolumne
County) and to the striker; and that the verb “to swot” and the noun
substantive “snoot” were likewise indefensible, and not to be tolerated.
Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own
courage, sat down.
A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking advantage of it,
opened in a higher key, “Tige ith”--but the master's attention was here
diverted by the searching eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of eleven, who
after the fashion of her sex preferred a personal recognition of her
presence before she spoke. Succeeding in catching his eye, she threw
back her long hair from her shoulders with an easy habitual gesture,
rose, and with a faint accession of color said:
“Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. McKinstry told mother
she's comin' back here to school.”
The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsistent with his
cynical austerity. Seeing the young girl curiously watching him with
an expectant smile, he regretted it. Cressy McKinstry, who was sixteen
years old, had been one of the pupils he had found at the school when
he first came. But as he had also found that she was there in the
extraordinary attitude of being “engaged” to one Seth Davis, a
fellow-pupil of nineteen, and as most of the courtship was carried on
freely and unceremoniously during school-hours with the full permission
of the master's predecessor, the master had been obliged to point out
to the parents of the devoted couple the embarrassing effects of this
association on the discipline of the school. The result had been the
withdrawal of the lovers, and possibly the good-will of the parents. The
return of the young lady was consequently a matter of some significance.
Had the master's protest been accepted, or had the engagement itself
been broken off?
Either was not improbable. His momentary loss of attention was Johnny
Filgee's great gain.
“Tige,” said Johnny, with sudden and alarming distinctness, “ith got
thix pupths--mothly yaller.”
In the laugh which followed this long withheld announcement of an
increase in the family of Johnny's yellow and disreputable setter
“Tiger,” who usually accompanied him to school and howled outside,
the master joined with marked distinctness. Then he said, with equally
marked severity, “Books!” The little levee was ended, and school began.
It continued for two hours with short sighs, corrugations of small
foreheads, the complaining cries and scratchings of slate pencils over
slates, and other signs of minor anguish among the more youthful of the
flock; and with more or less whisperings, movements of the lips, and
unconscious soliloquy among the older pupils. The master moved slowly up
and down the aisle with a word of encouragement or explanation here and
there, stopping with his hands behind him to gaze abstractedly out of
the windows to the wondering envy of the little ones. A faint hum, as
of invisible insects, gradually pervaded the school; the more persistent
droning of a large bee had become dangerously soporific. The hot breath
of the pines without had invaded the doors and windows; the warped
shingles and weather-boarding at times creaked and snapped under the
rays of the vertical and unclouded sun. A gentle perspiration broke
out like a mild epidemic in the infant class; little curls became damp,
brief lashes limp, round eyes moist, and small eyelids heavy. The master
himself started, and awoke out of a perilous dream of other eyes and
hair to collect himself severely. For the irresolute, half-embarrassed,
half-lazy figure of a man had halted doubtingly before the porch and
open door. Luckily the children, who were facing the master with their
backs to the entrance, did not see it.
Yet the figure was neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The master at
once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as “Uncle Ben,” a
good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin on an
unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title
was evidently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency and
heavy good-nature, for he was still a young man with no family ties, and
by reason of his singular shyness not even a visitor in the few families
of the neighborhood. As the master looked up, he had an irritating
recollection that Ben had been already haunting him for the last two
days, alternately appearing and disappearing in his path to and from
school as a more than usually reserved and bashful ghost. This, to the
master's cynical mind, clearly indicated that, like most ghosts, he had
something of essentially selfish import to communicate. Catching the
apparition's half-appealing eye, he proceeded to exorcise it with a
portentous frown and shake of the head, that caused it to timidly wane
and fall away from the porch, only however to reappear and wax larger a
few minutes later at one of the side windows. The infant class hailing
his appearance as a heaven-sent boon, the master was obliged to walk to
the door and command him sternly away, when, retreating to the fence, he
mounted the uppermost rail, and drawing a knife from his pocket, cut
a long splinter from the rail, and began to whittle it in patient and
meditative silence. But when recess was declared, and the relieved
feelings of the little flock had vent in the clearing around the
schoolhouse, the few who rushed to the spot found that Uncle Ben had
already disappeared. Whether the appearance of the children was too
inconsistent with his ghostly mission, or whether his heart failed him
at the last moment, the master could not determine. Yet, distasteful
as the impending interview promised to be, the master was vaguely and
irritatingly disappointed.
A few hours later, when school was being dismissed, the master
found Octavia Dean lingering near his desk. Looking into the girl's
mischievous eyes, he good-humoredly answered their expectation by
referring to her morning's news. “I thought Miss McKinstry had been
married by this time,” he said carelessly.
Octavia, swinging her satchel like a censer, as if she were performing
some act of thurification over her completed tasks, replied demurely:
“Oh no! dear no--not THAT.”
“So it would seem,” said the master.
“I reckon she never kalkilated to, either,” continued Octavia, slyly
looking up from the corner of her lashes.
“Indeed!”
“No--she was just funning with Seth Davis--that's all.”
“Funning with him?”
“Yes, sir. Kinder foolin' him, you know.”
“Kinder foolin' him!”
For an instant the master felt it his professional duty to protest
against this most unmaidenly and frivolous treatment of the matrimonial
engagement, but a second glance at the significant face of his youthful
auditor made him conclude that her instinctive knowledge of her own sex
could be better trusted than his imperfect theories. He turned towards
his desk without speaking. Octavia gave an extra swing to her satchel,
tossing it over her shoulder with a certain small coquettishness and
moved towards the door. As she did so the infant Filgee from the safe
vantage of the porch where he had lingered was suddenly impelled to a
crowning audacity! As if struck with an original idea, but apparently
addressing himself to space, he cried out, “Crethy M'Kinthry likth
teacher,” and instantly vanished.
Putting these incidents sternly aside, the master addressed himself to
the task of setting a few copies for the next day as the voices of his
departing flock faded from the porch. Presently a silence fell upon the
little school-house. Through the open door a cool, restful breath stole
gently as if nature were again stealthily taking possession of her own.
A squirrel boldly came across the porch, a few twittering birds charging
in stopped, beat the air hesitatingly for a moment with their wings, and
fell back with bashfully protesting breasts aslant against the open door
and the unlooked-for spectacle of the silent occupant. Then there was
another movement of intrusion, but this time human, and the master
looked up angrily to behold Uncle Ben.
He entered with a slow exasperating step, lifting his large boots very
high and putting them down again softly as if he were afraid of some
insecurity in the floor, or figuratively recognized the fact that the
pathways of knowledge were thorny and difficult. Reaching the master's
desk and the ministering presence above it, he stopped awkwardly, and
with the rim of his soft felt hat endeavored to wipe from his face the
meek smile it had worn when he entered. It chanced also that he had
halted before the minute stool of the infant Filgee, and his large
figure instantly assumed such Brobdingnagian proportions in contrast
that he became more embarrassed than ever. The master made no attempt to
relieve him, but regarded him with cold interrogation.
“I reckoned,” he began, leaning one hand on the master's desk with
affected ease, as he dusted his leg with his hat with the other, “I
reckoned--that is--I allowed--I orter say--that I'd find ye alone at
this time. Ye gin'rally are, ye know. It's a nice, soothin', restful,
stoodious time, when a man kin, so to speak, run back on his eddication
and think of all he ever knowed. Ye're jist like me, and ye see I sorter
spotted your ways to onct.”
“Then why did you come here this morning and disturb the school?”
demanded the master sharply.
“That's so, I sorter slipped up thar, didn't I?” said Uncle Ben with
a smile of rueful assent. “You see I didn't allow to COME IN then, but
on'y to hang round a leetle and kinder get used to it, and it to me.”
“Used to what?” said the master impatiently, albeit with a slight
softening at his intruder's penitent expression.
Uncle Ben did not reply immediately, but looked around as if for a seat,
tried one or two benches and a desk with his large hand as if testing
their security, and finally abandoning the idea as dangerous, seated
himself on the raised platform beside the master's chair, having
previously dusted it with the flap of his hat. Finding, however, that
the attitude was not conducive to explanation, he presently rose again,
and picking up one of the school-books from the master's desk eyed it
unskilfully upside down, and then said hesitatingly,--
“I reckon ye ain't usin' Dobell's 'Rithmetic here?”
“No,” said the master.
“That's bad. 'Pears to be played out--that Dobell feller. I was brought
up on Dobell. And Parsings' Grammar? Ye don't seem to be a using
Parsings' Grammar either?”
“No,” said the master, relenting still more as he glanced at Uncle Ben's
perplexed face with a faint smile.
“And I reckon you'd be saying the same of Jones' 'Stronomy and Algebry?
Things hev changed. You've got all the new style here,” he continued,
with affected carelessness, but studiously avoiding the master's eye.
“For a man ez wos brought up on Parsings, Dobell, and Jones, thar don't
appear to be much show nowadays.”
The master did not reply. Observing several shades of color chase each
other on Uncle Ben's face, he bent his own gravely over his books. The
act appeared to relieve his companion, who with his eyes still turned
towards the window went on:
“Ef you'd had them books--which you haven't--I had it in my mind to
ask you suthen'. I had an idea of--of--sort of reviewing my eddication.
Kinder going over the old books agin--jist to pass the time. Sorter
running in yer arter school hours and doin' a little practisin', eh? You
looking on me as an extry scholar--and I payin' ye as sich--but keepin'
it 'twixt ourselves, you know--just for a pastime, eh?”
As the master smilingly raised his head, he became suddenly and
ostentatiously attracted to the window.
“Them jay birds out there is mighty peart, coming right up to the
school-house! I reckon they think it sort o' restful too.”
“But if you really mean it, couldn't you use these books, Uncle Ben?”
said the master cheerfully. “I dare say there's little difference--the
principle is the same, you know.”
Uncle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as suddenly fell. He
took the book from the master's hand without meeting his eyes, held it
at arm's length, turned it over and then laid it softly down upon the
desk as if it were some excessively fragile article. “Certingly,” he
murmured, with assumed reflective ease. “Certingly. The principle's
all there.” Nevertheless he was quite breathless and a few beads of
perspiration stood out upon his smooth, blank forehead.
“And as to writing, for instance,” continued the master with increasing
heartiness as he took notice of these phenomena, “you know ANY copy-book
will do.”
He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large hand that took it
timidly not only trembled but grasped it with such fatal and hopeless
unfamiliarity that the master was fain to walk to the window and observe
the birds also.
“They're mighty bold--them jays,” said Uncle Ben, laying down the pen
with scrupulous exactitude beside the book and gazing at his fingers as
if he had achieved a miracle of delicate manipulation. “They don't seem
to be afeared of nothing, do they?”
There was another pause. The master suddenly turned from the window.
“I tell you what, Uncle Ben,” he said with prompt decision and unshaken
gravity, “the only thing for you to do is to just throw over Dobell and
Parsons and Jones and the old quill pen that I see you're accustomed
to, and start in fresh as if you'd never known them. Forget 'em all,
you know. It will be mighty hard of course to do that,” he continued,
looking out of the window, “but you must do it.”
He turned back, the brightness that transfigured Uncle Ben's face at
that moment brought a slight moisture into his own eyes. The humble
seeker of knowledge said hurriedly that he would try.
“And begin again at the beginning,” continued the master cheerfully.
“Exactly like one of those--in fact, as if you REALLY were a child
again.”
“That's so,” said Uncle Ben, rubbing his hands delightedly, “that's me!
Why, that's jest what I was sayin' to Roop”--
“Then you've already been talking about it?” intercepted the master in
some surprise. “I thought you wanted it kept secret?”
“Well, yes,” responded Uncle Ben dubiously. “But you see I sorter agreed
with Roop Filgee that if you took to my ideas and didn't object, I'd
give him two bits* every time he'd kem here and help me of an arternoon
when you was away and kinder stand guard around the school-house, you
know, so as to keep the fellows off. And Roop's mighty sharp for a boy,
ye know.”
* Two bits, i. e., twenty-five cents.
The master reflected a moment and concluded that Uncle Ben was probably
right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen, was also a
strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and blunt,
honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a
possibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement with
Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline of school hours
and might help them both. Nevertheless he asked good-humoredly, “But
couldn't you do this more securely and easily in your own house? I might
lend you the books, you know, and come to you twice a week.”
Uncle Ben's radiant face suddenly clouded. “It wouldn't be exactly the
same kind o' game to me an' Roop,” he said hesitatingly. “You see thar's
the idea o' the school-house, ye know, and the restfulness and the
quiet, and the gen'ral air o' study. And the boys around town ez
wouldn't think nothin' o' trapsen' into my cabin if they spotted what I
was up to thar, would never dream o' hunting me here.”
“Very well,” said the master, “let it be here then.” Observing that his
companion seemed to be struggling with an inarticulate gratitude and an
apparently inextricable buckskin purse in his pocket, he added quietly,
“I'll set you a few copies to commence with,” and began to lay out a few
unfinished examples of Master Johnny Filgee's scholastic achievements.
“After thanking YOU, Mr. Ford,” said Uncle Ben, faintly, “ef you'll jest
kinder signify, you know, what you consider a fair”--
Mr. Ford turned quickly and dexterously offered his hand to his
companion in such a manner that he was obliged to withdraw his own
from his pocket to grasp it in return. “You're very welcome,” said the
master, “and as I can only permit this sort of thing gratuitously, you'd
better NOT let me know that you propose giving anything even to Rupert.”
He shook Uncle Ben's perplexed hand again, briefly explained what he had
to do, and saying that he would now leave him alone a few minutes, he
took his hat and walked towards the door.
“Then you reckon,” said Uncle Ben slowly, regarding the work before him,
“that I'd better jest chuck them Dobell fellers overboard?”
“I certainly should,” responded the master with infinite gravity.
“And sorter waltz in fresh, like one them children?”
“Like a child,” nodded the master as he left the porch.
A few moments later, as he was finishing his cigar in the clearing, he
paused to glance in at the school-room window. Uncle Ben, stripped of
his coat and waistcoat, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up on his powerful
arms, had evidently cast Dobell and all misleading extraneous aid aside,
and with the perspiration standing out on his foolish forehead, and his
perplexed face close to the master's desk, was painfully groping along
towards the light in the tottering and devious tracks of Master Johnny
Filgee, like a very child indeed!