The return of Miss Cressida McKinstry to Indian Spring and her
interrupted studies was an event whose effects were not entirely
confined to the school. The broken engagement itself seemed of little
moment in the general estimation compared to her resumption of her
old footing as a scholar. A few ill-natured elders of her own sex,
and naturally exempt from the discriminating retort of Mr. McKinstry's
“shot-gun,” alleged that the Seminary at Sacramento had declined to
receive her, but the majority accepted her return with local pride as a
practical compliment to the educational facilities of Indian Spring.
The Tuolumne “Star,” with a breadth and eloquence touchingly
disproportionate to its actual size and quality of type and paper,
referred to the possible “growth of a grove of Academus at Indian
Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages and statesmen
were now meditating,” in a way that made the master feel exceedingly
uncomfortable. For some days the trail between the McKinstrys' ranch and
the school-house was lightly patrolled by reliefs of susceptible young
men, to whom the enfranchised Cressida, relieved from the dangerous
supervision of the Davis-McKinstry clique, was an object of ambitious
admiration. The young girl herself, who, in spite of the master's
annoyance, seemed to be following some conscientious duty in
consecutively arraying herself in the different dresses she had bought,
however she may have tantalized her admirers by this revelation of
bridal finery, did not venture to bring them near the limits of the
play-ground. It struck the master with some surprise that Indian Spring
did not seem to trouble itself in regard to his own privileged relations
with its rustic enchantress; the young men clearly were not jealous of
him; no matron had suggested any indecorum in a young girl of Cressy's
years and antecedents being intrusted to the teachings of a young man
scarcely her senior. Notwithstanding the attitude which Mr. Ford had
been pleased to assume towards her, this implied compliment to his
supposed monastic vocations affected him almost as uncomfortably as the
“Star's” extravagant eulogium. He was obliged to recall certain
foolish experiences of his own to enable him to rise superior to this
presumption of his asceticism.
In pursuance of his promise to McKinstry, he had procured a few
elementary books of study suitable to Cressy's new position, without,
however, taking her out of the smaller classes or the discipline of the
school. In a few weeks he was enabled to further improve her attitude by
making her a “monitor” over the smaller girls, thereby dividing certain
functions with Rupert Filgee, whose ministrations to the deceitful and
“silly” sex had been characterized by perhaps more vigilant scorn and
disparagement than was necessary. Cressy had accepted it as she had
accepted her new studies, with an indolent good-humor, and at times a
frankly supreme ignorance of their abstract or moral purpose that was
discouraging. “What's the good of that?” she would ask, lifting her
eyes abruptly to the master. Mr. Ford, somewhat embarrassed by her look,
which always, sooner or later, frankly confessed itself an excuse for a
perfectly irrelevant examination of his features in detail, would end in
giving her some severely practical answer. Yet, if the subject appealed
to any particular idiosyncrasy of her own, she would speedily master
the study. A passing predilection for botany was provoked by a single
incident. The master deeming this study a harmless young-lady-like
occupation, had one day introduced the topic at recess, and was met by
the usual answer. “But suppose,” he continued artfully, “somebody sent
you anonymously some flowers.”
“Her ho!” suggested Johnny Filgee hoarsely, with bold bad recklessness.
Ignoring the remark and the kick with which Rupert had resented it on
the person of his brother, the master continued:
“And if you couldn't find out who sent them, you would want at least to
know what they were and where they grew.”
“Ef they grew anywhere 'bout yer we could tell her that,” said a chorus
of small voices.
The master hesitated. He was conscious of being on delicate ground. He
was surrounded by a dozen pairs of little keen eyes from whom Nature had
never yet succeeded in hiding her secrets--eyes that had waited for
and knew the coming up of the earliest flowers; little fingers that had
never turned the pages of a text-book, but knew where to scrape away the
dead leaves above the first anemone, or had groped painfully among the
lifeless branches in forgotten hollows for the shy dog-rose; unguided
little feet that had instinctively made their way to remote southern
slopes for the first mariposas, or had unerringly threaded the
tule-hidden banks of the river for flower-de-luce. Convinced that he
could not hold his own on their level, he shamelessly struck at once
above it.
“Suppose that one of those flowers,” he continued, “was not like the
rest; that its stalks and leaves, instead of being green and soft, were
white and stringy like flannel as if to protect it from cold, wouldn't
it be nice to be able to say at once that it had lived only in the snow,
and that some one must have gone all that way up there above the snow
line to pick it?” The children, taken aback by this unfair introduction
of a floral stranger, were silent. Cressy thoughtfully accepted botany
on those possibilities. A week later she laid on the master's desk a
limp-looking plant with a stalk like heavy frayed worsted yarn. “It
ain't much to look at after all, is it?” she said. “I reckon I could cut
a better one with scissors outer an old cloth jacket of mine.”
“And you found it here?” asked the master in surprise.
“I got Masters to look for it when he was on the Summit. I described it
to him. I didn't allow he had the gumption to get it. But he did.”
Although botany languished slightly after this vicarious effort, it
kept Cressy in fresh bouquets, and extending its gentle influence to her
friends and acquaintances became slightly confounded with horticulture,
led to the planting of one or two gardens, and was accepted in school
as an implied concession to berries, apples, and nuts. In reading and
writing Cressy greatly improved, with a marked decrease in grammatical
solecisms, although she still retained certain characteristic words, and
always her own slow Southwestern, half musical intonation. This languid
deliberation was particularly noticeable in her reading aloud, and
gave the studied and measured rhetoric a charm of which her careless
colloquial speech was incapable. Even the “Fifth Reader,” with its
imposing passages from the English classics carefully selected with a
view of paralyzing small, hesitating, or hurried voices, in Cressy's
hands became no longer an unintelligible incantation. She had quietly
mastered the difficulties of pronunciation by some instinctive sense of
euphony if not of comprehension. The master with his eyes closed hardly
recognized his pupil. Whether or not she understood what she read he
hesitated to inquire; no doubt, as with her other studies, she knew
what attracted her. Rupert Filgee, a sympathetic if not always a correct
reader, who boldly took four and five syllabled fences flying only to
come to grief perhaps in the ditch of some rhetorical pause beyond,
alone expressed his scorn of her performance. Octavia Dean, torn between
her hopeless affection for this beautiful but inaccessible boy, and
her soul-friendship for this bigger but many-frocked girl, studied the
master's face with watchful anxiety.
It is needless to say that Hiram McKinstry was, in the intervals of
stake-driving and stock-hunting, heavily contented with this latest
evidence of his daughter's progress. He even intimated to the master
that her reading being an accomplishment that could be exercised at home
was conducive to that “kam” in which he was so deficient. It was also
rumored that Cressy's oral rendering of Addison's “Reflections in
Westminster Abbey” and Burke's “Indictment of Warren Hastings,” had
beguiled him one evening from improving an opportunity to “plug” one of
Harrison's boundary “raiders.”
The master shared in Cressy's glory in the public eye. But although Mrs.
McKinstry did not materially change her attitude of tolerant good-nature
towards him, he was painfully conscious that she looked upon her
daughter's studies and her husband's interests in them as a weakness
that might in course of time produce infirmity of homicidal purpose and
become enervating of eye and trigger-finger. And when Mr. McKinstry got
himself appointed as school-trustee, and was thereby obliged to mingle
with certain Eastern settlers,--colleagues on the Board,--this possible
weakening of the old sharply drawn sectional line between “Yanks” and
themselves gave her grave doubts of Hiram's physical stamina.
“The old man's worrits hev sorter shook out a little of his sand,” she
had explained. On those evenings when he attended the Board, she sought
higher consolation in prayer meeting at the Southern Baptist Church, in
whose exercises her Northern and Eastern neighbors, thinly disguised as
“Baal” and “Astaroth,” were generally overthrown and their temples made
desolate.
If Uncle Ben's progress was slower, it was no less satisfactory.
Without imagination and even without enthusiasm, he kept on with a dull
laborious persistency. When the irascible impatience of Rupert Filgee
at last succumbed to the obdurate slowness of his pupil, the master
himself, touched by Uncle Ben's perspiring forehead and perplexed
eyebrows, often devoted the rest of the afternoon to a gentle
elucidation of the mysteries before him, setting copies for his heavy
hand, or even guiding it with his own, like a child's, across the paper.
At times the appalling uselessness of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded
him of Rupert's taunting charge. Was he really doing this from a genuine
thirst for knowledge? It was inconsistent with all that Indian Spring
knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions; he was a simple
miner without scientific or technical knowledge; his already slight
acquaintance with arithmetic and the scrawl that served for his
signature were more than sufficient for his needs. Yet it was with this
latter sign-manual that he seemed to take infinite pains. The master,
one afternoon, thought fit to correct the apparent vanity of this
performance.
“If you took as much care in trying to form your letters according to
copy, you'd do better. Your signature is fair enough as it is.”
“But it don't look right, Mr. Ford,” said Uncle Ben, eying it
distrustfully; “somehow it ain't all there.”
“Why, certainly it is. Look, D A B N E Y--not very plain, it's true, but
there are all the letters.”
“That's just it, Mr. Ford; them AIN'T all the letters that ORTER be
there. I've allowed to write it D A B N E Y to save time and ink, but it
orter read DAUBIGNY,” said Uncle Ben, with painful distinctness.
“But that spells d'Aubigny!”
“It are.”
“Is that your name?”
“I reckon.”
The master looked at Uncle Ben doubtfully. Was this only another form of
the Dobell illusion? “Was your father a Frenchman?” he asked finally.
Uncle Ben paused as if to recall the trifling circumstances of his
father's nationality. “No.”
“Your grandfather?”
“I reckon not. At least ye couldn't prove it by me.”
“Was your father or grandfather a voyageur or trapper, or Canadian?”
“They were from Pike County, Mizzoori.”
The master regarded Uncle Ben still dubiously. “But you call yourself
Dabney. What makes you think your real name is d'Aubigny?”
“That's the way it uster be writ in letters to me in the States. Hold
on. I'll show ye.” He deliberately began to feel in his pockets, finally
extracting his old purse from which he produced a crumpled envelope, and
carefully smoothing it out, compared it with his signature.
“Thar, you see. It's the same--d'Aubigny.”
The master hesitated. After all, it was not impossible. He recalled
other instances of the singular transformation of names in the
Californian emigration. Yet he could not help saying, “Then you
concluded d'Aubigny was a better name than Dabney?”
“Do YOU think it's better?”
“Women might. I dare say your wife would prefer to be called Mrs.
d'Aubigny rather than Dabney.”
The chance shot told. Uncle Ben suddenly flushed to his ears.
“I didn't think o' that,” he said hurriedly. “I had another idee. I
reckoned that on the matter o' holdin' property and passin' in money
it would be better to hev your name put on the square, and to sorter go
down to bed rock for it, eh? If I wanted to take a hand in them lots or
Ditch shares, for instance--it would be only law to hev it made out in
the name o' d'Aubigny.”
Mr. Ford listened with certain impatient contempt. It was bad enough for
Uncle Ben to have exposed his weakness in inventing fictions about his
early education, but to invest himself now with a contingency of
capital for the sake of another childish vanity, was pitiable as it
was preposterous. There was no doubt that he had lied about his school
experiences; it was barely probable that his name was really d'Aubigny,
and it was quite consistent with all this--even setting apart the fact
that he was perfectly well known to be only a poor miner--that he should
lie again. Like most logical reasoners Mr. Ford forgot that humanity
might be illogical and inconsistent without being insincere. He turned
away without speaking as if indicating a wish to hear no more.
“Some o' these days,” said Uncle Ben, with dull persistency, “I'll tell
ye suthen'.”
“I'd advise you just now to drop it and stick to your lessons,” said the
master sharply.
“That's so,” said Uncle Ben hurriedly, hiding himself as it were in
an all-encompassing blush. “In course lessons first, boys, that's the
motto.” He again took up his pen and assumed his old laborious attitude.
But after a few moments it became evident that either the master's curt
dismissal of his subject or his own preoccupation with it, had somewhat
unsettled him. He cleaned his pen obtrusively, going to the window for
a better light, and whistling from time to time with a demonstrative
carelessness and a depressing gayety. He once broke into a murmuring,
meditative chant evidently referring to the previous conversation, in
its--“That's so--Yer we go--Lessons the first, boys, Yo, heave O.”
The rollicking marine character of this refrain, despite its utter
incongruousness, apparently struck him favorably, for he repeated it
softly, occasionally glancing behind him at the master who was coldly
absorbed at his desk. Presently he arose, carefully put his books away,
symmetrically piling them in a pyramid beside Mr. Ford's motionless
elbow, and then lifting his feet with high but gentle steps went to the
peg where his coat and hat were hanging. As he was about to put them on
he appeared suddenly struck with a sense of indecorousness in dressing
himself in the school, and taking them on his arm to the porch resumed
them outside. Then saying, “I clean disremembered I'd got to see a man.
So long, till to-morrow,” he disappeared whistling softly.
The old woodland hush fell back upon the school. It seemed very quiet
and empty. A faint sense of remorse stole over the master. Yet he
remembered that Uncle Ben had accepted without reproach and as a good
joke much more direct accusations from Rupert Filgee, and that he
himself had acted from a conscientious sense of duty towards the man.
But a conscientious sense of duty to inflict pain upon a fellow-mortal
for his own good does not always bring perfect serenity to the
inflicter--possibly because, in the defective machinery of human
compensation, pain is the only quality that is apt to appear in the
illustration. Mr. Ford felt uncomfortable, and being so, was naturally
vexed at the innocent cause. Why should Uncle Ben be offended because
he had simply declined to follow his weak fabrications any further? This
was his return for having tolerated it at first! It would be a lesson to
him henceforth. Nevertheless he got up and went to the door. The figure
of Uncle Ben was already indistinct among the leaves, but from the
motion of his shoulders he seemed to be still stepping high and softly
as if not yet clear of insecure and engulfing ground.
The silence still continuing, the master began mechanically to look
over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and to rearrange
the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease gathered by the devoted
Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a black thread and regularly left in the
inkstand cavity of Rupert's desk, were still lying on the floor where
they had been always hurled with equal regularity by that disdainful
Adonis. Picking up a slate from under a bench, his attention was
attracted by a forgotten cartoon on the reverse side. Mr. Ford at once
recognized it as the work of that youthful but eminent caricaturist,
Johnny Filgee. Broad in treatment, comprehensive in subject, liberal
in detail and slate-pencil--it represented Uncle Ben lying on the floor
with a book in his hand, tyrannized over by Rupert Filgee and regarded
in a striking profile of two features by Cressy McKinstry. The
daring realism of introducing the names of each character on their
legs--perhaps ideally enlarged for that purpose--left no doubt of their
identity. Equally daring but no less effective was the rendering of
a limited but dramatic conversation between the parties by the aid of
emotional balloons attached to their mouths like a visible gulp bearing
the respective legends: “I luv you,” “O my,” and “You git!”
The master was for a moment startled at this unlooked-for but graphic
testimony to the fact that Uncle Ben's visits to the school were
not only known but commented upon. The small eyes of those youthful
observers had been keener than his own. He had again been stupidly
deceived, in spite of his efforts. Love, albeit deficient in features
and wearing an improperly short bell-shaped frock, had boldly re-entered
the peaceful school, and disturbing complications on abnormal legs were
following at its heels.