AT SCHOOL
"But there all apart,
On his little seat
A little figure is set awry."
C. C. FRASER TYTLER
Gratian shouldered his satchel and set off to school. He had some new
thoughts in his head this morning, but still he was not too busy with
them to forget to look about him. It was evident that old Jonas had been
right; the storm spirits had been about in the night. The fallen autumn
leaves which had been lying in heaps the day before were scattered
everywhere, the little pools of water left by yesterday's rain had
almost disappeared, overhead the clouds were gradually settling down in
quiet masses as if tired and sleepy with the rushing about of the night
before.
It was always fresh up at Four Winds Farm, but to-day there was a
particularly brisk and inspiriting feeling in the air; and as Gratian
ran down the bit of steep hill between the gate and the road which he
partially followed to school, he laughed to himself as a little wind
came kissing him on the cheek.
"Good morning, wind," he said aloud. "Which of them are you, I wonder?"
And some old verses he had often heard his mother say came into his
head--
"North winds send hail,
South winds bring rain,
East winds we bewail,
West winds, blow amain."
"I think you must be west wind, but you're not blowing amain this
morning. Never mind; you can when you like, I know. _You_ can work with
a will. There now--how funny--I'm saying it myself; I wonder if that's
what the voices meant I should do--work with a will, work with a will,"
and Gratian sang the words over softly to himself as he ran along.
As I said, his road to school was great part of the way nothing but a
sheep-track. It was not that there did not exist a proper road, but this
proper road, naturally enough, went winding about a good deal, for it
was meant for carts and horses as well as or more than for little boys,
and no carts or horses could ever have got along it had the road run in
a direct line from the Farm to the village. For the village lay low and
the Farm very high. Gratian followed the road for the first half-mile or
so, that is to say as long as he could have gained nothing by quitting
it, but then came a corner at which he left it to meander gradually down
the high ground, while he scrambled over a low wall of loose stones and
found himself on what he always considered his own particular path. At
this point began the enjoyment of his walk, for a few minutes carried
him round the brow of the hill, out of sight of the road and of
everything save the sky above and the great stretching moorland beneath.
And this was what Gratian loved. He used to throw himself on the short
tufty grass, his elbows on the ground, and his chin in his hands--his
satchel wherever it liked, and lie there gazing and dreaming and wishing
he could stay thus always.
He did the same this morning, but somehow his dreams were not quite so
undisturbed. He was no longer sure that he would like to lie there
always doing nothing but dreaming, and now that he had got this idea
into his head everything about him seemed to be repeating it. He looked
at the heather, faded and dull now, and remembered how, a while ago, the
bees had been hard at work on the moors gathering their stores. "What a
lot of trouble it must be to make honey!" he thought. He felt his own
little rough coat, and smiled to think that not so very long ago it had
been walking about the hills on a different back. "It isn't much trouble
for the sheep to let their wool grow, certainly," he said to himself,
"but it's a lot of work for lots of people before wool is turned into a
coat for a little boy. Nothing can be done without work, I suppose, and
I'd rather be a bee than a sheep a good deal, though I'd rather be old
Watch than either, and _he_ works hard--yes, he certainly does."
And then suddenly he remembered that if he didn't bestir himself he
would be late at school, which wouldn't be at all the good start his
mother had advised him to make as it was Monday morning.
He went on pretty steadily for the rest of the way, only stopping about
six times, and that not for long together, otherwise he certainly would
not have got to school before morning lessons were over. But, as it was,
he got an approving nod from the teacher for being in very good time.
For the teacher could not help liking Gratian, though, as a pupil, he
gave him plenty of trouble, seeming really sometimes as if he _could_
not learn.
"And yet," thought the master--for he was a young man who did
think--"one cannot look into the child's face without seeing there are
brains behind it, and brains of no common kind maybe. But I haven't got
the knack of making him use them; for nine years old he is exceedingly
stupid."
Things went better to-day. Gratian was full of his new ideas and really
meant to try. But even trying with all one's might and main won't build
Rome in a day. Gratian had idled and dreamed through lesson-time too
often to lose the bad habit all at once. He saw himself passed as usual
by children younger than he, who had been a much shorter time at school,
and his face grew very melancholy, and two or three big tears gathered
more than once in his eyes while he began to say in his own mind that
trying was no good.
Morning school was over at twelve; most of the children lived in the
village, and some but a short way off, so that they could easily run
home for their dinner and be back in time for afternoon lessons; Gratian
Conyfer was the only one whose home was too far off for him to go back
in the middle of the day. So he brought his dinner with him and ate it
in winter beside the schoolroom fire, in summer in a corner of the
playground, where, under a tree, stood an old bench. This was the
dining-room he liked best, and though now summer was past and autumn
indeed fast fading into winter, Gratian had not yet deserted his summer
quarters, and here the schoolmaster found him half an hour or so before
it was time for the children's return.
"Are you not cold there, my boy?" he asked kindly.
"No, thank you, sir," Gratian answered, and looking more closely at him
the master saw he had been crying.
"What is the matter, Gratian?" he asked. "You've not been quarrelling or
fighting I'm sure, you never do, and as for lessons they went a bit
better to-day, I think, didn't they?"
But at these words Gratian only turned his face to the wall and
wept--wiping his eyes from time to time on the cuff of the linen blouse
which he wore at school over his coat.
The schoolmaster's heart was touched, though he was pretty well used to
tears. But Gratian's seemed different somehow.
"What is it, my boy?" he said again.
"It's--it's just that, sir--lessons, I mean. I did try, sir. I meant to
work with a will, I did indeed."
"But you did do better. I knew you were trying," said the teacher
quietly.
Gratian lifted his tear stained face and looked at the master in
surprise.
"Did you, sir?" he said. "It seemed to me to go worser and worser."
"No, I didn't think so. And sometimes, Gratian, when we think we are
doing worse, it shows we are really doing better. We're getting up a
little higher, you see, and beginning to look on and to see how far we
have to go, and that we might have got on faster. When we're not
climbing at all, but just staying lazily at the foot of the hill, we
don't know anything about how steep and high it is."
Gratian had quite left off crying by now and was listening attentively.
The master's words needed no explanation to him; he had caught the sense
and meaning at once.
"Everybody has to work if they're to do any good, haven't they, sir?" he
asked.
"_Everybody_," agreed the master.
"But wouldn't it be better if everybody _liked_ their work--couldn't
they do it better if they did?" he asked. "That's what I'm vexed about,
partly. I don't _like_ lessons, sir," he said in a tone of deep
conviction. "I'm afraid I'm too stupid ever to like them."
The schoolmaster could scarcely keep from smiling.
"You're not so very old yet, Gratian," he said. "It's just possible you
may change. Besides, in some ways the beginning's the worst. You can't
read very easily yet--not well enough to enjoy reading to yourself?"
"No, sir," said the boy, hanging his head again.
"Well, then, wait a while and see if you don't change about books and
lessons."
"And if I don't ever change," said Gratian earnestly. "Can people ever
do things well that they don't like doing?"
The schoolmaster looked at him. It was a curious question for a boy of
nine years old.
"Yes," he said, "I hope so, indeed," and his mind went back to a time
when he had looked forward to being something very different from a
village schoolmaster, when he could have fancied no employment could be
less to his liking than teaching. "I hope so, indeed," he repeated. "And
if you work with a will you--get to like the work whatever it is."
"Thank you, sir," said the boy, and the master turned away. Then a
thought struck him.
"What do you best like doing, Gratian?"
The boy hesitated. Then he grew a little red.
"It isn't doing anything really," he said; "it's what mother calls
dreaming--out on the moors, sir, that's the best of all--with the wind
all about, and nothing but it and the moor and the sky. And the feel of
it keeps in me. Even when I'm at home in the kitchen by the fire, if I
shut my eyes I can fancy it."
The master nodded his head.
"Dreaming is no harm in its right place. But if one did nothing but
dream, the dreams would lose their colour, I expect."
"That's something like what _they_ said, again," thought the boy to
himself.
The schoolmaster walked away. "A child with something uncommon about
him, I fancy," he said in his mind. "One sees that sometimes in a child
living as much alone with nature as he does. But I scarcely think he's
clever, and then the rough daily life will most likely nip in the bud
any sort of poetry or imagination that there may be germs of."
He didn't quite understand Gratian, and then, too, he didn't take into
account what it is to be born under the protection of the four winds of
heaven.
But Gratian felt much happier after his talk with the master, and
afternoon lessons went better. They were generally easier than the
morning ones, and often more interesting. This afternoon it was a
geography lesson. The master drew out the great frame with the big maps
hanging on it, and explained to the children as he went along. It was
about the north to-day, far away up in the north, where the ice-fields
spread for hundreds of miles and everything is in a sleep of whiteness
and silence. And Gratian listened with parted lips and earnest eyes. He
seemed to see it all. "I wish I knew as much as he does," he thought. "I
wish I could read it in books to myself."
And for the first time there came home to him a faint, shadowy feeling
of what books are--of the treasures buried in the rows and rows of
little black letters that he so often wished had never been invented.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I'll try to learn so that I can read it all
to myself."
It was growing already a little dusk when he set off on his walk home.
The evenings were beginning "to draw in" as the country folk say.
But little cared the merry throng who poured out of the schoolroom gate
as five o'clock rang from the church clock, chattering, racing, tumbling
over each other, pushing, pulling, shouting, but all in play. For they
are a good-natured set, though rough and ready--these hardy moor
children. And they grow into honest and sturdy men and women, hospitable
and kindly, active and thrifty, though they care for little beyond their
own corner of the world, and would scarcely find it out if all the books
and "learning" in existence were suddenly made an end of.
There are mischievous imps among them, nevertheless, and none was more
so than Tony, the miller's son. He meant no harm, but he loved teasing,
and Gratian, gentle and silent, was often a tempting victim. This
evening, as sometimes happened, a dozen or so of the children whose
homes lay at the end of the village, past which was the road to the
Farm, went on together.
"We'll run a bit of the road home with thee, Gratian," said Tony.
And though the boy did not much care for their company, he thought it
would be unfriendly to say so, nor did he like to refuse when Tony
insisted on carrying his satchel for him. "There's no books in mine,"
he said; "I took them home at dinner-time, and I'm sure your shoulders
will be aching before you get to the Farm with the weight of yours. My
goodness, how many books have you got in it? I say," as he pretended to
examine them, "here's Gratian Conyfer going to be head o' the school,
and put us all to shame with his learning."
But as Gratian said nothing he seemed satisfied, and after stopping a
minute or two to arrange the satchel again, ran after the others.
"It's getting dark, Tony," said his sister Dolly, "we mustn't go
farther. Good-night, Gratian, we've brought you a bit of your way--Tony,
and Ralph, and I," for the other children had gradually fallen off.
"Yes--a good mile of it, thank you, Dolly. And thank you, Tony, for
helping me with my satchel--that's right, thank you," as Tony was
officiously fastening it on.
"Good-night," said Tony; "you're no coward any way, Gratian. I shouldn't
like to have all that way to go in the dark, for it will be dark soon.
There are queer things to be seen on the moor after sunset, folks say."
"Ay, so they say," said Ralph.
"I'll be home in no time," Gratian called back. For he did not know what
fear was.
But after he had ran awhile, he felt more tired than usual. Was it
perhaps the fit of crying he had had at dinner-time that made him so
weary? He plodded on, however, shifting his satchel from time to time,
it felt so strangely heavy, and queer tales he had heard of the little
mountain man that would jump on your shoulders, and cling on till he had
strangled you, unless you remembered the right spell to force him off
with; or of the brownies who catch children with invisible ropes, and
make them run round and round without their knowing they have left the
straight road, till they drop with fatigue, came into his mind.
"There must be something wrong with my satchel," he said at last, and he
pulled it round so that he could open it. He drew his hand out with a
cry of vexation and distress. Tony, yes it must have been Tony--though
at first he was half-inclined to think the mountain men or the brownies
had been playing their tricks on him--Tony had filled the satchel with
heavy stones, and had no doubt taken out the books at the time he was
pretending to examine them. It was too bad. And what had he done with
the books?
"He may have taken them home with him, he may have hidden them and get
them as he passes by, or he may have left them on the moor, and if it
rains they'll be spoilt, and the copy-books are sure to blow away."
For in his new ardour, Gratian had brought home books of all kinds,
meaning to work so well that his master should be quite astonished the
next day, and the poor little fellow sat down on the heather, his arms
and shoulders aching and sore, and let the tears roll down his face.
Suddenly a slight sound, something between a murmur and a rustle, some
little way from him, made him look round. It was an unusually still
evening; Gratian had scarcely ever known the moorland road so still--it
could not be the wind then! He looked round him curiously, and for a
moment or two forgot his troubles in his wonder as to what it could be.
There it was, again, and the boy started to his feet.